Last night I attended the AFC Ajax – Groningen match with a business contact. We were expecting an exciting game, but what we saw was… impressive and honestly, a bit unsettling.
I know I look happy in the photo, but that was mostly nerves 😅
Two fireworks incidents from the F-side.
Match abandoned in the 6th minute.
And this happened in the Johan Cruijff ArenA the most professionally managed stadium in the Netherlands.
What many people don’t realize is how advanced the security actually is there:
• AI-powered video surveillance that detects abnormal behavior
• real-time monitoring from a central control room
• advanced crowd control systems
• entry control with checks, scanners, and continuous camera tracking
Technically, the ArenA is one of the most secure venues you can imagine.
And yet, last night I saw how a coordinated group of masked supporters, hidden in thick smoke, managed to temporarily shut the whole system down.
The AI cameras went “blind”.
Stewards saw only silhouettes.
Within seconds, everything stopped.
Match abandoned.
There will be arrests afterwards, surely but by then, the damage was done.
Even the best systems can be temporarily disabled when attackers use mass, timing, and camouflage strategically.
And that’s exactly what we’re seeing today in cybersecurity.
Just look at the past few months:
Three(!) major global IT outages, including core Microsoft services.
Schiphol Airport and the Dutch Railways went down.
And not just that:
• companies worldwide couldn’t log in
• email, Teams, and cloud services were offline for hours
• entire organizations, hospitals, and governments came to a standstill
• logistics chains were instantly disrupted
One mistake, one leak, one faulty update or one coordinated attack and the whole world feels it.
It’s the same lesson as in the stadium last night.
It’s not just about the quality of your security, but about your resilience when that security doesn’t work as expected.
What happened last night was a physical version of what happens digitally all the time.
So here’s my question:
What more can a top-secured venue like the ArenA or a global tech player like Microsoft do to become even safer and more resilient?
Or are we ultimately still just human vulnerable to human error and risk?
One thing’s for sure:
We won’t forget this evening anytime soon… so at least the business relationship got stronger 😅💪⚽️
