In June 2022, up to 1.5 million users experienced difficulties using NemID, which affected access to essential public services such as borger.dk, e-Boks, sundhed.dk, and minretssag.dk. The issues lasted for four days and have now led to Datatilsynet (the Danish Data Protection Agency) expressing “serious criticism” of the situation. Datatilsynet pointed out that the breakdown affected critical national infrastructure, which could potentially have serious consequences for the affected citizens – especially considering the long period during which the system was down. This information comes from a press release from the agency.
Responsible for the operation at the time of the incident was the company Nets DanID. Their inability to restore normal operation was due to the backup solution not being available. A test of the emergency procedure, which could have revealed the issue with the backup solution, had not been conducted since about two years before the breakdown.