More than half of Dutch businesses have made no contingency plans to prepare for a cyberattack, electricity blackout or other major network failure, the economic affairs ministry has warned.

The government has urged companies to draw up emergency procedures as part of its Denk Vooruit (“think ahead”) campaign to deal with a loss of crucial services such as electricity, cloud data storage and mobile communications.

A survey by Motivaction on behalf of the ministry found that just 29% of companies believe they are capable of dealing with espionage, while 19% think they are resilient enough to handle the economic consequences of a war and 15% could deal with the loss of internet and cloud services.

Marianne Schuurmans-Wijdeven, mayor of Haarlemmermeer and head of the national safety council, told Het Parool that it was only a matter of time before the electricity network suffered a large-scale blackout.

She said she had recently visited a power station on the Maasvlakte in Rotterdam harbour that supplies 8% of the electricity to the Randstad region.

“When I hear how much work they have every day repelling attacks on their systems, there is a very big chance that one of those attacks will succeed,” she said.

“Loss of electricity is the worst thing that can happen. We’re so dependent on it. If you want to cause chaos, that’s the best way to do it.”

First 72 hours

The government says companies should draw up a contingency plan to cover the first 72 hours of a crisis to cover potential problems such as making sure people can get in and out of buildings when security systems are down and having backup records on paper.

Economic affairs minister Heleen Herbert said the risk of disruption to supply chains and communications networks had increased as a result of recent events such as the war in the Middle East.

“Research shows that the resilience of Dutch businesses is too low and their dependence is too great. We need to do better, which is why we have launched this campaign.

“If your business can keep going, you are helping not just yourself but your customers, your suppliers and your environment.”