Defense ministry network disruption causes widespread outages in the Netherlands

THE HAGUE -- Flights were grounded, civil servants were locked out of their computers and police officers resorted to texting one another in the Netherlands on Wednesday as a network outage at the Ministry of Defense caused major IT failures across the country.

The extent and the cause of the problems are not yet known, but a spokesperson for the Dutch defense ministry confirmed the issue can be traced back to one of their systems.

“We are experiencing an outage in one of our networks at the defense department and it is a network that is also used by other parts of the Dutch government,” Laurens Bos told The Associated Press.

The National Cybersecurity Center said it is not yet known if the outage is a result of a cyber attack.

Travelers at the southern Eindhoven Airport were stuck since early morning with flights from budget carriers Ryanair and Transavia canceled. “There is no air traffic at all and we have very little information about the cause,” spokesperson Judith de Roy said.

The airport also serves as a military airport operated by the Ministry of Defense. The country’s largest airport, Amsterdam’s Schiphol, has not reported any problems.

Some passengers from Eindhoven were bussed to Brussels Airport, 100 miles south in Belgium.

The alarm and the communications systems for emergency workers were also impacted. The country’s Coast Guard said they were not reachable by phone or radio. Police officers used mobile phones and text messaging to stay in contact rather than their normal communication system.

Hospitals, the country’s tax office and the national emergency number 112 were not reporting problems.

Telecom company KPN was also experiencing a major outage with its mobile service, but the company said it wasn't clear if the problem was related to the issues at the defense ministry.

The defense ministry said it was unclear how long the outage will last.