A “malfunction” at a data center used by the Dutch Ministry of Defence has caused widespread IT problems across the Netherlands, with flights grounded and emergency services compromised.

The incident began on Tuesday evening and saw civilian flights at Eindhoven Airport, which also serves as a military base, grounded due to air traffic control systems not functioning.

The emergency services, including the police and the coastguard, were unable to access their communication systems, and civil servants at the Dutch MoD and in other departments also lost access to their workstations.

Holland’s National Cybersecurity Centre wrote on X that: “Due to a malfunction in a data center, several users of the data center and their IT services have been affected. As a result, it is not possible for the NCSC to send out security advice. We are working hard on a solution.”

An update from the Dutch MoD, issued on Wednesday afternoon, said: “More and more systems that were affected by the network outage today are being restored. As a result, work processes can be started up in phases. This is expected to take a few more hours."

It added that the cause of the outage had been identified, and that it would provide more information in due course. It said there was “no indication” the outage had been caused by a cyber attack.

In 2021 the Dutch MoD began a ten-year IT modernization program known as GrIT, and engaged IBM and Atos to help it build new data centers, safeguard its IT systems, and build a proprietary broadband mobile network for its classified government information.

At the time it said construction of the new data centers would take approximately 20 months.