Miguel De Bruycker, director of the Centre for Cybersecurity Belgium (CCB), said that under the current circumstances, fully storing data within Europe is “impossible” as American tech companies dominate the space
Belgian cybersecurity expert Miguel De Bruycker has warned that Europe is so far behind the US in terms of digital infrastructure that “it has lost the internet.”
De Bruycker, director of the Centre for Cybersecurity Belgium (CCB), said that under the current circumstances, fully storing data within Europe is “impossible” as American tech companies dominate the space.
“We’ve lost the whole cloud. We have lost the internet, let’s be honest. If I want my information 100 per cent in the EU… keep on dreaming. You’re setting an objective that is not realistic,” De Bruycker told Financial Times.
The official warned that Europe’s cybersecurity largely depends on the cooperation of privately owned tech companies that are mostly based in the US.
This reliance did not pose an “enormous security problem” for the EU, said De Bruycker, who has led the CCB since its founding a decade ago. However, he added that Europe was falling behind on critical emerging technologies led by the US and other countries, including cloud computing and artificial intelligence, which are essential to defending against cyber attacks.
He said that Europe needs to develop its own capabilities to improve its tech infrastructure, adding that regulations like the EU’s AI Act are “blocking” innovations.
He argued that EU governments should back private-sector efforts to build scale in areas such as cloud computing and digital identification. IT experts say companies including France’s OVHcloud and Germany’s Schwarz Digital already provide critical digital infrastructure.
At the same time, EU countries have grown increasingly concerned about their reliance on US technology firms such as Amazon, prompting renewed calls to strengthen Europe’s “technological sovereignty.”
“I think on an EU level we should clearly identify what sovereignty means to us in the digital domain. “Instead of putting that focus on how can we stop the US ‘hyperscalers’, maybe we put our energy in . . . building up something by ourselves,” he said.
Europe has been witnessing a spike in cyber attacks, with Belgium particularly falling victim to hybrid attacks.
Last year, Belgium was hit by five waves of DDoS attacks lasting several days, in which compromised devices flooded the websites of businesses and government agencies, temporarily knocking them offline. De Bruycker said the attacks typically targeted up to 20 organisations a day and were generally carried out by “Russian hacktivists.”
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