Object Security in the Netherlands 2026: Data, Trends and New Rules

Key findings

1. Since 15 August 2026 the Wet weerbaarheid kritieke entiteiten (Wwke) obliges approximately 500 designated organisations across 14 sectors to complete a risk assessment within 9 months and to implement resilience measures — explicitly including physical security, access control and surveillance — within 10 months of designation.

2. The regulator stepped in hard in 2025: fines for security and investigation companies rose from 48 to 312 (a 6.5-fold increase) and licence revocations from 4 to 53 (a 13-fold increase), summed from the quarterly figures published by Justis.

3. The long decline in business burglaries is over: down 68.5% between 2012 and 2025, but flat at around 12,000 cases per year since 2021 — and Amsterdam rose 2.9% in 2025 against a national decline of 4.1%.

4. The Dutch security market is approaching a combined €4.3 billion, but the growth is in technology: manned guarding reached €1.929 billion in 2025 (+1%), while the technical security sector reached €2.36 billion, up 21% versus 2023 — two markets measured by two different industry bodies, moving at very different speeds.

5. Vandalism is the property crime that is not declining: 71,480 registered cases in 2025, essentially flat for five years, while burglary and theft fell.

Business burglaries: the decline has stopped

The Dutch police's open crime data (table 47018NED, category 'diefstal/inbraak bedrijven en instellingen') shows one of the most consistent downward trends in Dutch crime statistics — until 2021. From 37,521 registered cases in 2012, the number fell almost every year to a low of 11,227 in 2021: a decline of more than two-thirds. Since then the trend has changed character. The years 2022 through 2025 have all landed in a narrow band between 11,800 and 13,000 cases, with 11,835 registered in 2025.

Computed from the official series, that is a fall of 68.5% between 2012 and 2025 — but the last four years form a plateau, not a continued decline. The 2024-to-2025 change was −4.1%. Put differently: Dutch businesses and institutions still reported roughly 32 burglaries per day in 2025 (11,835 divided by 365).

Shoplifting followed a different curve. It peaked at 44,911 registered cases in 2023 — the highest figure since 2012 — and has since come down 17.4% to 37,116 in 2025. Registered shoplifting remains well above its pandemic-era low of 30,712 in 2021.

Four cities compared: Amsterdam bucks the trend

The same police dataset breaks business burglaries down by municipality. The four largest concentrations outside the national average tell diverging stories. Amsterdam registered 1,617 business burglaries in 2025 — up 2.9% from 1,571 in 2024, against a national decline of 4.1%. Computed from the same series, Amsterdam alone accounts for roughly 13.7% of all business burglaries in the Netherlands: about one in seven.

The Hague moved in the opposite direction, falling 15.4% to 408 cases in 2025 — its lowest figure in the five-year window. Rotterdam declined to 646 and Eindhoven was essentially stable at 268.

The broader victimisation picture from Statistics Netherlands (CBS) confirms where the pressure sits. In 2025, the municipalities with the most victims of traditional crime per 1,000 residents were Amsterdam (63), Utrecht (54), Eindhoven (52) and Rotterdam (50), and strongly urban municipalities saw a 29% victimisation rate against 13% in non-urban areas. One in five people aged 15 or over — around 3 million — was a victim of traditional crime in 2025.

Vandalism: the property crime that is not declining

While burglary fell for a decade, vandalism did not follow. Police registered 71,480 cases of vernieling (vandalism/property damage, all targets — not businesses only) in 2025. The five-year series is essentially flat: 72,041 in 2021, 71,054 in 2022, 70,066 in 2023, 72,110 in 2024 and 71,480 in 2025. CBS reports vandalism up 2% in its 2025 crime overview, in a year when total thefts and burglaries were 3% below 2023.

The long-term view sharpens the contrast. Against the 2012 reference of 134,123 registered cases, vandalism is down 46.7% — a substantial fall, but far smaller than the 68.5% decline in business burglary over the same period, and with no progress at all since 2021. For site owners, vandalism has quietly become the property risk that prevention efforts of the last decade have not solved.

The industry: approaching €4.3 billion, and shifting from people to technology

The Dutch private security industry is measured by two different bodies, and their 2025 figures point in the same direction: the money is moving from manpower to technology. The manned-guarding branch — surveyed annually by the Nederlandse Veiligheidsbranche in its Branchescan, an association member survey — grew from €1.7 billion in 2023 to €1.910 billion in 2024 (+11%), but to only €1.929 billion in 2025: growth of just 1%. The association itself names wage costs, up 4.5% in 2025, as the brake.

The workforce is shrinking slightly and ageing. The branch counted 30,585 security personnel in 2025 (−0.5%), of whom 25,385 in permanent employment (+1.5%); flexible and temporary staffing fell 9% and the use of self-employed contractors fell 20%. At the end of 2025 there were 3,700 open vacancies — down from 4,100 a year earlier, but still roughly 12% of the entire workforce when computed against the 30,585 employed. 46% of guards are 45 or older, and 30% of vacancies take 8 to 12 weeks to fill. Still, the branch is optimistic: 60% of firms expect revenue growth in 2026 (averaging +9% expected), 40% expect stability, and none expect decline.

Official statistics underline how fast the sector has been growing. CBS reported that security and investigation services posted revenue growth of 12.6% over 2024 — the largest revenue increase of any branch within Dutch business services that year, ahead of cleaning (+10.3%) and IT services (+6%).

The technical side is growing much faster than manned guarding. Research by the Federatie Veilig Nederland puts technical security revenue at €2.36 billion in 2025, up 21% versus 2023 (+14.4% adjusted for inflation) — roughly 0.21% of Dutch GDP. Within that: fire safety €1.379 billion (+26%), security and access control €981 million (+15%), suppliers and importers €1.156 billion (+27%), system integrators €590 million and service providers €614 million. Technical-security employment rose 10% to 13,600, 60% of firms already use AI solutions, and 76% expect further growth in 2026.

Because the two markets are measured by different bodies, they should be read side by side rather than as one audited total — but taken together they approach €4.3 billion, with all of the momentum on the technology side. The number of licensed providers remains large: the public Wpbr register maintained by Justis listed 3,825 companies holding a valid licence as of 19 August 2026.

Enforcement: 6.5 times as many fines, 13 times as many revoked licences

The most striking shift in the 2025 numbers comes from the regulator. Justis, the screening authority of the Dutch Ministry of Justice and Security, publishes quarterly enforcement figures under the Wpbr — the licensing law for private security organisations and investigation bureaus. Summed across the four quarters (Justis notes that marginal deviations are possible), the 2025 totals show a regulator that has changed posture entirely.

Fines rose from 48 in 2024 to 312 in 2025 — a 6.5-fold increase. Licence revocations rose from 4 to 53: thirteen times as many. Warnings jumped from 2 to 68. This did not happen because the sector shrank — on the contrary, licences granted to companies rose from 821 to 990 and approvals of managers from 1,222 to 1,476. The regulator is admitting more players and simultaneously disciplining far more of them.

For buyers of security services, the practical consequence is simple: verifying a provider's licence is no longer a formality. The public register — 3,825 licence holders as of 19 August 2026 — lists every company's name, Chamber of Commerce number and licence expiry date, and is freely searchable.

Regulation in 2026: the Wpbr framework and the new Wwke

The Dutch legal framework for private security starts with the Wpbr (Wet particuliere beveiligingsorganisaties en recherchebureaus). Performing security or investigation work without a Wpbr licence is prohibited by law. The register distinguishes eight licence categories — from security organisations working for third parties (ND) and in-house corporate security services (BD) to private alarm centres (PAC), video surveillance centres (VTC) and cash-in-transit (PGW). A licence is valid for a maximum of five years, costs €600 per organisation plus €92 per manager approval, and requires reliability screening of the organisation, separate approval of every manager, screening of personnel and prescribed diplomas. Since April 2018 Justis publishes the full register of licence holders, updated quarterly.

The significant change of 2026 sits one level up. On 15 August 2026 two laws came into force: the Cyberbeveiligingswet, implementing the EU NIS2 directive, and the Wet weerbaarheid kritieke entiteiten (Wwke), implementing the EU Critical Entities Resilience directive (2022/2557). The Wwke designates approximately 500 organisations as critical entities across 14 sectors: energy, transport, water, healthcare, government, digital infrastructure, banking, chemicals, financial market infrastructure, wastewater, space, nuclear, food and meteorology.

The obligations are concrete and clocked. A designated entity must complete a risk assessment within 9 months of designation, and must implement appropriate technical, organisational and physical resilience measures within 10 months — the law explicitly names physical security, access control and surveillance. Incidents that cause significant disruption must be reported within 24 hours. The legislative timeline was short: the Tweede Kamer passed the bill on 15 April 2026, the Eerste Kamer on 7 July 2026, and it entered into force on 15 August 2026. The Cyberbeveiligingswet, in parallel, covers 18 sectors, requires registration in a national entity register and places responsibility for security measures explicitly at board level.

The consequence: for roughly 500 organisations, physical security has moved from a discretionary spend to a statutory obligation with deadlines measured in months.

What this means for organisations

First, the burglary plateau changes the risk calculus. A decade of decline reflected better locks, better lighting, better cameras and better compliance — improvements that are now embedded in the baseline. The roughly 12,000 burglaries that still occur each year concentrate where those baseline measures end, and the 2025 city data shows the pressure is not evenly distributed: Amsterdam is rising while the country declines. Organisations with sites in high-pressure urban areas should treat the national trend line as irrelevant to their own exposure.

Second, vandalism deserves a separate line in the risk register. It is the one property crime that has not declined in five years, and measures optimised against burglary — perimeter hardening, alarm response — do not necessarily deter it. Visible presence and surveillance do.

Third, organisations designated under the Wwke are on a clock. The 9-month risk-assessment deadline and the 10-month measures deadline both run from designation, and the law names physical security, access control and surveillance explicitly. A documented, current risk assessment is the rational starting point, well before the deadline forces it.

Fourth, the enforcement surge makes provider verification a governance issue. With fines up 6.5-fold and revocations up 13-fold in a single year, the chance that an unlicensed or non-compliant provider appears in a supply chain is no longer theoretical. Checking a provider's entry in the public Wpbr register takes minutes and belongs in every procurement file.

Finally, the labour market will keep tightening the manned side of the industry: 3,700 open vacancies, an ageing guard population and wage growth that the branch itself calls the brake on its growth. Buyers should expect continued upward pressure on rates for manned guarding, and should evaluate hybrid concepts — people where judgement is needed, technology where it is not — on their merits rather than on tradition.

Sources and methodology

All figures in this report were retrieved and verified on 24 August 2026 from the public sources below. Derived figures — the 68.5% decline, the 6.5× and 13× enforcement multiples, the roughly 32 burglaries per day and the roughly 12% vacancy rate — are our own arithmetic on the official numbers and can be re-derived directly from the cited series. This report contains no forecasts and no proprietary data.

Crime series (business burglary 2.5.1, shoplifting 2.5.2, vandalism 2.2.1; national and per municipality): politie registered crime, table 47018NED, retrieved via the official open-data OData API at dataderden.cbs.nl/ODataApi/odata/47018NED/ (human-readable portal: data.politie.nl). Data period 2012–2025; the table contains no 2026 data yet. National region code NL00; municipalities GM0363 (Amsterdam), GM0599 (Rotterdam), GM0518 (The Hague), GM0772 (Eindhoven).

National crime context 2025: CBS news release 'Traditionele criminaliteit zoals diefstal en geweld gelijk gebleven', 2 March 2026, cbs.nl/nl-nl/nieuws/2026/10/traditionele-criminaliteit-zoals-diefstal-en-geweld-gelijk-gebleven. Data period 2025.

Licensing and enforcement: Justis public Wpbr register (justis.nl/registers/wpbr-register, stating 3,825 results, last updated 19-08-2026) and Justis quarterly Wpbr figures for 2024 and 2025 (justis.nl/producten/particuliere-beveiliging-en-recherche/kwartaalcijfers-2024-wet-particuliere-beveiligingsorganisaties-en-recherchebureaus-wpbr and the equivalent 2025 page). Annual totals are our summation of the four published quarters; Justis reserves marginal deviations. Wpbr system description: justis.nl/producten/particuliere-beveiliging-en-recherche and ondernemersplein.overheid.nl; legal text: wetten.overheid.nl/BWBR0008973.

Manned-guarding industry: Nederlandse Veiligheidsbranche, 'Branchescan beveiligingssector 2025', published 20 May 2026, veiligheidsbranche.nl — an annual member survey of the association (2024 edition: 32 members, approximately 54% of membership), to be read as association survey data, not official statistics. Corroborated via securitymanagement.nl (21-05-2025 and 21-05-2026). Sector revenue growth 2024: CBS, 'Omzet zakelijke dienstverlening hoger in vierde kwartaal 2024', 7 March 2025, cbs.nl.

Technical security market: research by Federatie Veilig Nederland, reported by BeveiligingNieuws, 'Technische beveiligingsbranche groeit fors en zet in op innovatie', 4 June 2026, beveiligingnieuws.nl. Data period 2025 versus 2023.

Wwke and Cyberbeveiligingswet: Rijksoverheid news release of 15 August 2026 ('Cyberbeveiligingswet en Wet weerbaarheid kritieke entiteiten vanaf vandaag van kracht', rijksoverheid.nl), corroborated by the NCTV (nctv.nl) and the Eerste Kamer legislative dossier 36.765 (eerstekamer.nl).

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