Welcome to SOCRadar's Belgium Threat Landscape Report's CISO Brief!

Belgium’s security leaders face a data-driven cyber threat landscape where public administration, information services, finance, and operationally sensitive industries remain important targets. Threat actors prioritize data theft, credential abuse, vulnerability exploitation, ransomware, and phishing, while espionage-linked activity adds further complexity. SOCRadar’s Belgium Threat Landscape Report’s CISO Brief provides security leaders with actionable intelligence to improve threat visibility, strengthen access controls, and build resilience against evolving cyber threats.

Download the full report today to gain a comprehensive understanding of the cyber threats impacting Belgium and enhance your security strategy.

Key Cybersecurity Insights for Security Leaders

• Data Compromise Remains the Dominant Threat: Data breach and compromise accounts for 68.68% of Dark Web threat categories and 57.95% of threat types, making sensitive data protection a major priority.
• Government Organizations Require Priority Visibility: Public Administration accounts for 53.60% of Dark Web threats, highlighting the exposure of government systems, records, and credentials.
• Vulnerability Exploitation Enables Broader Compromise: Exploitation and vulnerabilities represents 9.66% of threat types, followed by unauthorized access and credentials at 8.81%.
• Phishing Supports Larger Attack Chains: Phishing and social engineering accounts for 6.53% of threat types, reinforcing its role in obtaining initial access and compromising credentials.
• Espionage Remains a Strategic Concern: State-sponsored activity accounts for 4.40% of Dark Web threat categories, with exploitation and phishing potentially supporting intelligence collection.
• Ransomware Defense Must Cover Multiple Actors: LockBit leads at 16.5%, followed by Qilin at 11.5%, while 67.6% of ransomware activity comes from other operators.
• Manufacturing and Professional Services Face Elevated Risk: These sectors account for 24.24% and 21.21% of ransomware targeting, respectively, making operational resilience essential.
• Phishing Heavily Targets Accounting Services: Accounting firms account for 50% of phishing activity, creating risks to client financial information and business credentials.
• Diverse Phishing Lures Complicate Detection: DHL verification pages lead at 15.79%, while generic messages, webmail logins, banking pages, and cryptocurrency-related lures also appear.
• HTTPS-Based Phishing Requires Updated Detection: 67.5% of phishing sites use HTTPS, requiring security teams to move beyond padlock-based awareness and focus on domain, URL, and content analysis.

Why This Report Matters for CISOs

CISOs in Belgium must prepare for a threat landscape where data theft dominates underground activity and credential abuse, vulnerability exploitation, and phishing serve as important paths to compromise. Public administration faces concentrated Dark Web exposure, while ransomware operators prioritize manufacturing and professional services where downtime can create significant operational consequences.

Security teams should prioritize Dark Web monitoring, credential exposure detection, vulnerability management, ransomware preparedness, and phishing defense. Stronger MFA enforcement, privileged access monitoring, endpoint security, secure backups, and intelligence-driven detection can help organizations reduce the risk of data compromise, unauthorized access, and operational disruption.