Knowledge base on information security
Practical background to technical security examinations and to the organisational assurance of information security and security awareness. Written for directors, security officers and buyers who want to take informed, demonstrably substantiated decisions on the basis of facts, building on established methodology and best practice.
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What is an electronic security survey?
An electronic security survey, in the Netherlands called an Elektronisch Veiligheidsonderzoek (EVO) and internationally a TSCM sweep, is a technical counter-espionage examination of a room or object for planted eavesdropping and observation devices.
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What a sweep can and cannot establish
A sweep gives a methodically substantiated picture of what is present and detectable within the agreed scope and at the time of the examination.
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Threat profiles: why the distinction matters
A threat profile records in advance which actors realistically have an interest in the information discussed or processed in a room, what capabilities they have, and what access they can obtain on site or remotely.
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What ABRO and the Dutch Cybersecurity Act (NIS2) require
The ABRO and the Dutch Cybersecurity Act both set security requirements, but from a different starting point.
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How do you choose a provider for EVO or TSCM examination?
You do not judge a provider of electronic security surveys (EVO), TSCM sweeps or technical counter-espionage examination on the outcome alone.
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Publicly known cases
Technical surveillance mostly stays out of sight and rarely becomes public.
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The Dutch national TSCM/EVO policy advice
The national framework VIRBI 2025 refers to for examining secured rooms, and the two moments at which that examination must take place.
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TBB rooms: handling and use procedure
The structural measures determine what a room can withstand; the way it is handled determines what remains of that in practice.
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AIVD-evaluated products: what ‘approved’ means in practice
The list is not a seal of approval for a brand: the evaluation covers one configuration, and the deployment advisory sets where the claim stops.
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TEMPEST and compromising emanations
Every device radiates energy; sometimes what it processes can be reconstructed from it. What the regulations require, and from which level.
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Zoning and secured zones under VIRBI 2025
Where special information may be processed, which minimum measures apply per classification, and how a zone relates to an ABRO compartment.
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OBER measures: what the model covers and where the survey fits
The ABRO orders physical security into four categories and calculates delay time against intervention time. What that calculation does and does not measure.
Insights
Short pieces on documented cases and new legislation, and what they mean in practice.
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Espionage by the path of least resistance
Printers, VoIP phones, routers and cameras as the way in. Five GRU and FSB campaigns with one pattern: computers that nobody treats as computers.
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Built into the wall: a camera module costing barely ten euros
Behind a wall thermostat at a Ukrainian drone manufacturer sat commercially available electronics, placed by someone entitled to be there.
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Evil twin: the name checks out, the network does not
During the NATO summit in The Hague a Wi-Fi network appeared under the same name as the legitimate NATO guest network. The AIVD and the police went looking.
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TEMPEST: voting machines and headsets give away what you are doing, at tens of metres
In 2006 the screen of a Dutch voting machine proved reconstructable at forty metres, through a wall. Twenty years on, the same principle applies to headphones.
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The risk of supply chain espionage: a near-undetectable keylogger
In 1984 the NSA removed eleven tons of equipment from the Moscow embassy. The bugs had been bought eight years earlier, built into the typewriters themselves.
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Nearest Neighbor Attack: your network does not stop at the wall
In 2018 the GRU still needed a car park beside the OPCW. Four years later the same service logged in to a target’s Wi-Fi from thousands of kilometres away, through the neighbours.
