Victims of cyber bullying in the Netherlands 2019, by gender and type

In 2019, 8.4 percent of Dutch men and women surveyed admitted to having experienced cyber bullying in some form or other. In total, there were slightly more male victims reported than females. Forms of bullying also differed slightly between men and women, with more men being more susceptible to blackmail and threats while women were more likely to be victims of slander and stalking.

Emails are most common cybercrime medium

Emails are a main source of cybercrime in the Netherlands, with the most often encountered form of security threats at the office (16 percent of all threats) being phishing mails. Besides emails, social media - another medium at the forefront of daily communication accounted for a remaining 12 percent of reported online threats. A similar survey run outside the workplace confirmed this, with most respondents agreeing that emails contained the highest risk of cyber crime encounter - higher than public computer usage and file downloads. Despite this, email was still the most trusted form of e-communication in the Netherlands when it came to user privacy. Social media such as Twitter, Facebook Messenger and Snapchat on the other hand scored lowest in terms of trust.

Germany leads in compliance specialists

Since the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was implemented in 2018, companies across the world have needed to step up their security budget and efforts in order to comply with the new laws which are among the strictest in the world for data privacy. In 2019, Germany was the biggest spender when it came to data protection authorities (DPAs) in Europe, accounting for nearly 30 percent of all European DPA tech specialists.