King Willem-Alexander Visits The Hague Security Delta

On 23 March 2017, his Majesty King Willem-Alexander visited The Hague Security Delta: a network in which businesses, knowledge institutions and governments work together on knowledge development and innovation in the field of security. The core is the HSD Campus, the national innovation centre for security in The Hague. 50 of the 250 partners of HSD are located at the Campus. These parties vary from governments to knowledge institutions and from startups & SMEs to corporate organisations. All of these partners share a common goal: more business activity, more jobs and a secure world. 

At the HSD Campus, the King of the Netherlands spoke with representatives of involved organisations and the HSD Board, followed by a guided tour. Richard Franken, executive director of HSD: "This visit offered us the opportunity to familiarise his Majesty with the diversity on initiatives within HSD. Besides that, we discussed some challenges in the security field, such as the lack of IT and cyber security talent, the tensions between privacy and security, and the cyber security threats with regards to the Internet of Things."

HSD partners talked about four topics with King Willem Alexander:

• The education of Cyber Security talent. The University of Leiden, TU Delft and The Hague University of Applied Sciences offer an executive master education in Cyber Security at the Cyber Security Academy. The King spoke with professors and professional students about challenges, such as guaranteeing the sufficient supply of professional teachers, anticipating on the quick developments within the cyber security domain and the protection of the balance between security and privacy.

• SAM the security robot, which can patrol autonomously. The robot is designed by Robot Security Systems/Lobeco in collaboration with Trigion, TU Delft and end users. With the help of HSD investments and its partners, it is now successfully used at the Port of Rotterdam. In addition to the physical threats, the port of Rotterdam also needs to be resilient against digital threats.

• The National Cyber Testbed, an investigation by TNO and HSD - in consultation with the Metropolitan region Rotterdam/The Hague - with a focus on how society can be more resilient against cyber attacks. As long as the possibilities of digitalising, ‘The internet of Things’ and ‘Smart Cities’ grow, vulnerabilities for ‘hacks’ will grow as well. The municipality of The Hague and KPN have been the first organisations to support the development of this Testbed.

• Sweetie 2.0: preventing child abuse. Tracks Inspector, the University of Leiden and Tilburg University work for Terre des Hommes on the development of an advanced version of a ‘chat robot’. Using artificial intelligence it prevents the abuse of children through webcam sex.  

The official press release can be found here and here.