Weekly Cybersecurity Digest [December, Week 1]
Posted on December 9, 2025
Dear Valued Clients,
Welcome to this week’s cybersecurity digest from Make Sense, your trusted partner in building measurable resilience across Europe’s rapidly evolving digital and institutional landscape. The first week of December underscored the intensification of large-scale disruption campaigns, geopolitical targeting of policy institutions, and coordinated defence drills across allied nations.
From the world’s largest recorded DDoS attack to NATO’s collective cyber-readiness demonstration, the risk narrative reminds us that Europe’s cyber frontier is now a contest of speed, scale, and systemic preparedness.
✅ Top Stories of the Week
i. Massive 29.7 Tbps DDoS Attack Rattles European-connected Financial Networks
On 7 December 2025, security firms disclosed a record-breaking 29.7 Tbps distributed denial-of-service attack on a major financial institution, powered by IoT botnet amplification and targeting European networks. The scale overwhelmed defences until mitigated via BGP blackholing, underscoring the urgent need for improved 5G device-segmentation and stronger network-edge security across the region. [Read more via thehackernews]
ii. Co-ordinated Phishing Campaigns Impersonate EU Events – Targeting Think-tanks, Governments
On 5 December 2025, cybersecurity researchers disclosed a series of phishing campaigns by state-linked actors who impersonated major European security conferences. Using fake invites, the attackers targeted cloud email and collaboration accounts at EU-based governments, think tanks, and policy organisations, marking a shift towards highly tailored social engineering aimed at institutional espionage. [Read more via GBHackers]
iii. Cyber Coalition 2025 Concludes with a Wide-scale NATO Cyber Readiness Demonstration
On 4 December 2025, NATO wrapped up its largest-ever cyber exercise – Cyber Coalition 2025 – involving 1,300 “cyber defenders” from 29 Allies and seven partner nations. The drills simulated attacks on critical infrastructure, government networks and military systems, reinforcing collective resilience at a time of heightened digital-war concerns across Europe. [Read more via Defence Industry]
✅ Industry Trends & Insights
Biggest Upstream-vendor Risks Hit European Healthcare
On 8 December 2025, a report from Black Book Research found that only 13 % of European hospitals have tested “kill-switches” for critical vendors and shared AI/data platforms. A concerning 36% have no formal emergency-disconnect plan – exposing a large proportion of healthcare institutions to downstream supply-chain and third-party risks under regulatory frameworks such as the NIS2 Directive. [Read via PharmiWeb]
Southern Europe Emerges as the Frontline in the Digital War Narrative
On 6 December 2025, a major Euronews feature highlighted how countries like Greece are increasingly viewed as digital frontline states in the ongoing cyber conflict between East and West. According to the article, Greece’s national cyber-authority warns that its proximity to an “aggressive neighbour” makes it a potential first-line target, emphasising how geopolitical tension is shaping cyber-defence strategy across southern Europe. [Read more via euronews]
✅ Regulatory & Policy Updates
EU Digital Omnibus Gains Renewed Focus in Dec 2025 Negotiations
On 3 December 2025, legal analysts reported fresh momentum behind the Digital Omnibus package – the European Commission’s effort to streamline and update core EU digital laws, including the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the ePrivacy Directive, the NIS2 Directive, and the Data Act. The proposals aim to reduce compliance burdens, simplify cookie consent, ease data-access rules, and relax some obligations around automated decisions, drawing both support and criticism from privacy advocates. [Read more via faegredrinker]
BSI Act Brings NIS2 Obligations into Force in Germany
On 5 December 2025, Germany’s parliament passed the national implementing law for the NIS2 Directive – the BSI Act, giving legal effect to the EU-wide cybersecurity obligations. The Act immediately expands compliance requirements to nearly 29,000 essential entities across critical sectors such as energy, health, transport, and telecommunications; the federal authority, the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), assumes central oversight. [Read more via gtlaw]
✅ Cyber IQ Challenge + Proactive Security Hacks
Quick Quiz:
Which capability most improves resilience against hyperscale DDoS attacks and targeted institutional phishing?
A) Perimeter firewalls alone
B) Distributed detection, zero-trust identity and automated traffic filtering
C) Annual red-team tests
D) Traditional SOC alerting
(Answer below)
Smart Security Moves of the Week
- Hyper-scale defence: Stress-test network-edge resilience against multi-Tbps volumetric attacks and enable automated traffic shedding.
- Institutional phishing drills: Run scenario-based exercises modelling spoofed invitations and policy-themed lures targeting senior leadership.
- NATO-grade coordination: Align incident response with cross-sector and cross-border communication playbooks.
- Healthcare vendor assurance: Implement emergency-disconnect rehearsals and supply-chain risk scoring for critical platforms.
Answer: B) Distributed detection, zero-trust identity and automated traffic filtering.
✅ Conclusion
From record-level DDoS saturation and state-crafted phishing to NATO’s largest-ever readiness exercise, this week reflects Europe’s deepening exposure to systemic cyber disruption. Defence now requires advanced automation, geopolitical intelligence and sector-wide coordination rather than isolated controls.
At Make Sense, we convert intelligence into measurable defence – strengthening monitoring, rehearsing crisis playbooks and unifying digital, operational and supply-chain resilience.
Stay secure,
The Make Sense SRL Team & CyberTania
