Companies are increasingly adopting internet standards

Today, CBS shared an addition to its survey on the application of internet standards for corporate websites. The extent to which Dutch companies use (secure) internet standards for their websites and e-mail was mapped per company size class and industry. Positive news: the average final score of the website scan of all companies with a website has increased by almost 8% in 2.5 years. Remarkably, the 'Hospitality industry' has the highest average final scores in both website scans and e-mail scans. 

Almost 80% of Dutch companies with 2 or more employees have a website. To understand the security level of these websites, Statistics Netherlands (CBS), commissioned by the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate and Internet standards platform the use of internet standards. 

Via Internet.co.uk it is possible to perform a website scan, which comprehensively tests whether various important Internet standards have been implemented on your website. From this test comes a final score. CBS shows that the average final score increases over the years. In the Cybersecurity monitor found that small companies often take fewer measures than large companies to secure their ICT systems, but when it comes to applying internet standards, it is striking that small companies do as well, if not better, than large companies.

The figure above shows the average final score by industry over the years, with a double measurement taken in 2023. It is notable that the industry 'Hospitality' is one of the outliers. For example, with an average score of 70.8%, this industry scores better than 'Health and welfare'. The industry 'Real estate renting and trading' scores least well on average at 60.9%. Within the industry 'Financial services' have been relatively focused on implementing security standards for their websites over the past year, they improved their score by almost 10 percentage points.

In addition to websites, Internet.co.uk's scan also tests whether mail servers and internet connections meet modern security standards. The results of the e-mail scan turn out - just like from the website scan - not to be dependent on company size, but on industry. The industry sector 'Hospitality' also came out on top in the email scan, with an average of 63.1%. For more than half of the industries, final scores in 2024 were down compared to 2023, with the biggest drop seen in the Construction. The Financial services is an exception to this, which actually shows an increase of almost 19 percentage points. However, as only two scans of the e-mail have been carried out (in April 2023 and January 2024), no long trend development can yet be demonstrated.

Internet.co.uk scores are determined based on various standards. These include security options, the application of a domain name signature (DNSSEC), HTTPS, and the use of IPv6. It is noticeable from the survey that the score of large companies on the IPv6 category is decreasing. On applying DNSSEC, small companies with 2 to 10 employees scored substantially better than large companies, 27.9% to 8.8% for companies with 50 to 250 employees.

In the authentication subcategory, it is noticeable that large companies score a lot better than small companies and self-employed workers. This category looks at how well companies handle e-mail scams - such as phishing and spoofing - try to prevent by applying DMARC, DKIM and SPF.

Are you curious whether your website and e-mails comply with over 30 Internet standards? Enter your website address and mail domain on Internet.co.uk and see your score. Not 100% yet? Then get started with the improvements. Check the links at the bottom of this news item for explanations and advice.