Collaboration and certified ICT services help SMEs in the fight against AI-driven cybercrime

samenwerking-en-gecertificeerde-ict-dienstverlening-helpen-mkb-in-strijd-tegen-ai-gedreven

Published by

WINMAG Pro Editorial Team

Sun, 29 March 2026, 12:10

Read time: 4 min 0 sec

Access to tools based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) is becoming increasingly available and usable for more people. This also increases the threat of AI-driven cybercrime hand in hand. With the well-known ChatGPT, which now has around 110 million active users, individuals can relatively easily produce text, images, codes, and scripts. This leads to an increase in hacks, phishing emails, malware, identity theft, deepfakes, and ransomware. But AI also has a positive side. It is increasingly being used as a tool to make organizations safer and more robust. It is a race with growing dynamics that calls for more collaboration and investment from government, business, and education.

The biggest threat to both large and small organizations is still phishing. Phishing emails appear to come from reliable companies like LinkedIn, DHL, Spotify, Microsoft, or Google, but they are not actually from them. The goal of these emails is to mislead you into sharing personal information, such as passwords or bank details. The numbers do not lie. The American Astra calculated that an average of 3.5 billion phishing emails are sent per day.(1) That amounts to one in every hundred emails sent. Google alone blocks about 100 million of them daily.(2) According to DMARC, the Netherlands was the target of the highest number of phishing emails worldwide in 2022.(3) More than 60 percent of all companies experienced a cyber incident last year.(4) About ninety percent of all cybersecurity incidents in companies can be traced back to a phishing email. According to AAG, four out of five entrepreneurs expect to be attacked online in the coming year.

Ransomware as a service for criminals

Malware, or malicious software, is becoming increasingly ingenious as a result of AI. Cybercriminals use their own language models similar to ChatGPT. Tools like WormGPT, FraudGPT, and DarkBart, the dark web variant of Google's AI model Bart, pose a concrete threat. Most attacks in 2022 originated from Russia, China, and the United States.(6) AI-driven cybercrime has rapidly become a clear business model. Ransomware as a Service (RaaS) is a model that has now become widely spread. In total, about 14,000 reports of a cyber incident were made to the police last year.(7) The damage from such an incident amounts to an average of 270 thousand euros for a Dutch SME.(8) The total damage from cybercrime for Dutch society was about 10 billion euros last year.(9) Entrepreneurs must be aware of these developments and take proactive measures to protect themselves against the growing threats.

National Police Lab AI

However, AI can also help to combat this growing cyber threat. The enormous analytical capacity of AI can be used to recognize unusual patterns in data and to understand or analyze code so that malware is detected earlier. With the help of AI, a cyber attack can be predicted and prevented, an attack can be fought more effectively, perpetrators can be tracked down better, and an attack can be used to anticipate another attack. The National Police Lab AI (NPAI) was started back in 2020. This lab investigates matters such as image recognition, speech recognition, behavioral analysis, and cybercrime intelligence. The NPAI has developed and tested various tools, among others, to recognize phishing emails or to identify cybercriminals by their writing style.

Certification for ICT services

AI is a powerful tool in the fight against cybercriminals. However, it is important to gain and maintain an advantage in this ongoing race, as criminals will continuously improve and further personalize their attacks through the use of AI. A robust system is needed to provide lasting resistance. This requires a lot of research, innovation, and collaboration from government, business, and the technology sector. With the growing complexity, more investment is needed in development, training, awareness, and governance. SMEs are vulnerable and often limited in their ability to independently increase their cyber resilience. Meanwhile, a cyber-secure SME is becoming increasingly important for the Dutch economy and society. Some of these companies operate in critical sectors such as energy or healthcare, or they are part of a supply chain of larger organizations like defense. An insecure SME can thus affect the stability of an entire chain or even the economy. SME entrepreneurs must increasingly rely on the knowledge and expertise of their ICT service providers. To help SMEs choose a good ICT service provider, the government has taken an important step by commissioning the development of a certification for ICT service providers by the Center for Crime Prevention and Safety (CCV). With such a certification, SMEs can better arm themselves against the rapidly growing threat of cybercrime.