Figure for March 2026: we received 17 million external emails in 2025, all of which were thoroughly checked

Of the 17 million external emails we received in 2025, we quarantined 2 million of them for review, classified 1 million as junk mail and deemed 14 million to be safe.

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Infographic showing that our FPS received seventeen million emails in 2025

Of the 17 million external emails we received in 2025, we quarantined 2 million of them for review, classified 1 million as junk mail and deemed 14 million to be safe.

As we reported earlier, our ICT department is doing everything it can to prevent cyberattacks. And not without reason. Last year, we received a staggering 17 million external emails and our systems carefully checked every single one of them. Of these we:

  • placed 2 million of them in quarantine for review.
  • classified 1 million as junk mail as they contained unwanted advertising or fraudulent messages.
  • considered 14 million of them safe. This final group of messages ended up in employees' inboxes.

In addition, our security systems generated 75 alerts:

  • 64 low-impact alerts.
  • 7 medium-impact alerts that required focused analysis.
  • 4 critical alerts that required up to 10 days of investigation to ensure the security of the internal network.

For that purpose, we work closely with other federal departments, such as the Centre for Cybersecurity Belgium (CCB) and the Belgian State Security.
 

Raising awareness amongst employees


But we can only make our FPS truly cyber-secure if all employees are also highly aware of the problem. That is why we are continuing to run a large number of awareness-raising activities.

For example, we organise a whole host of initiatives for CyberMonth each year in October. In 2025, we received a visit from the director of the CCB at that time. We also publish about 30 cyber-related articles a year on our internal communication platform.

In addition, colleagues still regularly receive a purposely prepared phishing email – an imitation of a fraudulent email – which they must report. Once they have reported the email, they follow a brief training course on the phishing email in question, or other aspects of cybersecurity.

By way of comparison, within our FPS, around 3,700 users exchanged 34 million (internal) emails in 2025.

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