Each basic team has set up an action from the police. This varies from flyers at the weekly market, to gaming with young people or attention on social media. Agents in various places are also talking to entrepreneurs to show them how they can properly secure their own systems, for example.
Victims
In Gelderland and Overijssel alone, an average of 23 victims of digital crime report to the police every day. Nationally, 2.2 million Dutch people were victims of various online crime phenomena in 2022. Reason for the East Netherlands police to set up the day of action. Together with Platform Veilig Ondernemen (PVO), Center for Safety and Digitalization (CVD) and Safety Network East Netherlands, a start was made at the end of 2023 to organize the day.
Enthusiasm
In a short time we managed to get more than eighty organizations enthusiastic. Together they represent more than two hundred actions. Municipalities, Halt!, libraries, Rabobank, Cisco and many other parties are holding promotions. The aim of the day was one hundred actions spread across the East Netherlands unit. Jelly Knoll is one of the initiators: ‘We had of course hoped for so much enthusiasm, but never expected it! Everyone immediately came up with ideas for an action that suits them. We mainly focus on young people, the digitally less skilled and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). There are many actions for them today. But it doesn’t stop after April 2. We want to maintain a lasting collaboration. You can only tackle digital crime together. Prevention is better than cure, this also applies to online crime.
Not Today!
The day started with a live broadcast of good morning Netherlands. Actions in Zwolle were highlighted several times in the broadcast. The day ends in the PEC Stadium in Zwolle. Hundreds of entrepreneurs attend Better Safe Than Sorry: a conference organized by the Platform for Safe Entrepreneurship (PVO). Anton Jansen from PVO: ‘The meeting was already planned for this day. We immediately joined in and ensured that more participants could attend. There have been so many that we had to arrange a larger space. Very nice to see how everyone wants to be informed. Together we ensure that they are more aware and resilient to digital crime.
Follow-up
‘The goal is that we will really make a difference with this day. Not just today, but also for the weeks, months and years to come. And this is the edition in the East of the Netherlands, but of course this should be taken up nationally. It is not yet clear whether we will organize such a day again next year. If it were up to me, there would definitely be a sequel. Then with even more organizations and even more actions. We must continue to work together against digital crime,” says Ülkü Karagan, one of the two initiators, enthusiastically.
MvS
