Toespraak van staatssecretaris Dijkhoff bij de ONE Conference

Toespraak | 13-04-2015

Ladies and gentlemen,

May I extend a very warm welcome to the ONE conference! I think this is the most extraordinary group of whizz-kids and computer talent that has ever come together in the Netherlands – with the possible exception of the day Steve Jobs and Bill Gates both changed planes at Schiphol Airport.

Ladies and gentlemen,

On November 17 1988 – when I was seven years old – the Dutch national research institute for mathematics and computer science received an email from the United States. It was a historic moment. The Netherlands was the second country in the world to officially go online. Not much later, I was given my first computer, a Commodore 64 with a tape deck. Back then, every computer game began with the instruction 'press play on tape'.

A couple of years later, we were in the Pentium age. To make the most of my pocket money, I built my own PC. Mother boards were cheap in one shop and video cards in another. I muddled along in the optimistic belief that 'If a plug fits, that’s where it belongs.' But then I plugged the audio cable for a CD burner into the mother board’s power socket and my CD burner literally burst into flames.

I went to one of the local PC shops and talked the owner into repairing it. Free of charge! That was the day I realised I was better at talking than building. The future was clear: I would become a politician.

I’m still fascinated by the early days of the computer and the internet. It was like being in the Wild West. There were no rules, no standards and smart people were thinking up new ways to challenge the status quo every day. But just like the Wild West, it was fun to read about, but you wouldn’t want to actually live there..

Today, more and more people are victims of internet crime. We have to watch out for phishing emails and identity theft, annoying crimes that cause a lot of harm to a lot of people. Globally, the dangers are far greater than a stolen password or a maxed-out credit card. Cyber attacks – by states and criminals – are real-life scenarios with a very high threat level. Cyber attackers are able to steal information and disrupt our digital infrastructure. And anyone who threatens a country’s digital infrastructure is a threat to social order. To prevent this from happening, we hold conferences like today’s.

This is the third ONE Conference to be organised in The Hague. The 2013 edition took ‘Responsible Disclosure’ as one of its themes. The Netherlands presented guidelines for working with ethical hackers to increase cyber security. We have already seen the benefits. And now we want to share them with the rest of the world.

During the 2014 edition, the Global Conference on Cyber Space was announced to you. And I am unbelievably proud that we are now on the eve of this event. It won’t be easy to surpass the success of the past two years. But I am confident we have found a challenging new goal for 2016. A goal that meets a global need: an internet that is free, secure and an instrument of prosperity for all.

To achieve this we have to get ready to repel cyber threats.

• We need Computer Emergency Response Teams that are prepared to respond to every incident;
• we need to cooperate internationally by sharing best practices. As corny as it may sound: Sharing is Caring!
• And we need to get our capacity, policy and laws in order to make full use of the internet’s economic potential.

So CERT maturity is our goal in Europe and the world! So let’s get ready to achieve that goal in 2016!

Ladies and gentlemen,

To achieve all this, governments, businesses and experts have to work together. I have to be honest with you. Politics and ICT are not always easy bedfellows. In the 1990s, one of our previous prime ministers was ridiculed after he was given a lesson in computing on a TV programme. When a schoolgirl asked him to go to the bookmarks with the mouse, he picked up the mouse and placed it on the screen. Obviously, as we know now, he was way ahead of his time. Today, everyone uses a touch screen.

Government has a big responsibility. I mentioned that twenty-five years ago the Netherlands was the first country to communicate online with the United States. A lot has changed since then. More and more aspects of our lives are being played out on the internet. From buying a pair of shoes to storing our financial and medical records. A secure and free internet is an essential condition for prosperity.

Governments must act as the spider in the cyber web of all the parties involved. We are already doing this in our own CERT: the National Cyber Security Center. It brings liaisons representing public and private parties together in-house to examine cyber threats through a wide-angle lens. This is the only way to respond to incidents quickly and appropriately.

The challenge for 2016 is to transcend borders. Digital threats don’t respect national frontiers. So individual countries must help each other and deal with them together. This means we need to strengthen the CERTs. Cooperation in capacity building and knowledge sharing has become one of the most important items on the international cyber agenda. It will also be a priority during the Netherlands’ Presidency of the EU in 2016.

But it is also important to you here today. The technical and operational discussions you hold during this conference will inform the strategic discussions at the GCCS in the coming days. And they will feed the agenda of the Hague Security Delta Cyber Security Week, where Dutch businesses are currently getting ready to reap the opportunities that the cyber world offers.

By participating in the ONE Conference you are making a direct contribution to the international policy agenda.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Since I set fire to my CD burner as a child, I’ll leave the technology to you. A heavy burden rests on your shoulders: to ensure the internet is free, secure and an instrument of prosperity. In short, a safe place to do business. That’s good for the Netherlands. Good for Europe. And good for the world. Online and offline!

I wish you all a very successful day.

Thank you very much.