CYBERSECURITY STRATEGY BELGIUM 2.0 – 2021-2025 ii. Companies Companies play a big role in protecting their own infrastructure and their employees’ data. Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs, less than 250 employees) have an important place in this, as they comprise more than 99% of Belgian companies. This group of stakeholders includes educational institutions and suppliers of security products. Security products such as firewalls, virus scans, encryption or other software and hardware products make IT systems a lot safer and reduce the likelihood of incidents. Investing in these security products, supporting suppliers of them, and facilitating users of IT systems in the use of these products is important. Developing a basic cybersecurity certification that allows a company to demonstrate that it is paying due attention to the most common cyber threats is a not insignificant aspect of this approach and can also serve as a competitive advantage. In 2019, the European Union also launched a cybersecurity certification framework in this vein. iii. Government Services Belgium has a complex government structure which does not make a coordinated cybersecurity policy for government departments easy. The federal government has horizontal, vertical and programmatic services. Regions and Communities have ministries and directorates. The Centre for Cybersecurity Belgium (CCB) develops advice and guidelines that are available to all government departments. Security and cybersecurity in particular are federal matters and dealt with at the national level. iv. Organizations of Vital Interest Our country’s Organizations of Vital Interest (OVI) need to be optimally protected against cyberattacks, as incidents affecting these organizations can have a large-scale, national impact. In this context, Organizations of Vital Interest Refer to the public and private entities that provide an essential service to the Belgian population and that use network and information systems to do so. OVI should therefore be understood as the operators of critical infrastructures, Operators of 10