As of this week, the Telecom Agency is officially the National Cybersecurity Certification Authority (NCCA). From this new role, it oversees the certification of IT products, services and processes. Its goal is to make digital products and services more digitally secure and thus increase our country's digital resilience.
Almost everyone now has one or more smart devices in their home. A smartphone, for example, or a smart thermostat or smart doorbell. We use the Internet more and more and work online a lot. Private use of online services is also growing, such as streaming services or storing data in the cloud.
It is important that the digital products and services we use every day-such as power, the Internet and telephony-are secure and do not fail due to cyber attacks, for example.
Therefore, new security requirements are being imposed from Europe. These are laid down in the European Cybersecurity Regulation, also known as the Cybersecurity Act (CSA). CSA is a European certification system for cybersecurity products, services and processes. Each member state appoints a national authority to test whether products and services meet the agreed requirements. For the Netherlands, that will be Agentschap Telecom.
Angeline van Dijk, Chief Inspector Director of the Netherlands Radiocommunications Agency is proud of the new task for the agency: "This new system makes it clear to everyone how safe and resilient products and services are. Consumers will soon be able to make a more conscious choice: do I choose a certified product or not? Certified products are safer to use and more resilient against cybercrime. Especially since security requirements are expected to be voluntary now, but likely to become mandatory for manufacturers and providers in Europe in the future. Certified products in the future will be recognizable by a European cybersecurity logo. That will make the Netherlands and Europe more digitally secure."
