Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 23 February 2022
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport
General Scheme of the Communications Regulation (Enforcement) Bill: Discussion
Mr. Joseph Stephens:
In terms of the first questions on our capabilities, the Government made a decision in July 2021 to increase the capacity of the NCSC. It was a five-year plan to increase our numbers by the end of this year to approximately 45 people from our initial base of 25 people. We launched a number of recruitment competitions, which included a permanent director. Mr. Richard Browne is now in that position. We also launched a number of competitions at principal officer level on the technical and the management sides. This is in addition to a number of senior management positions as well as cybersecurity specialists. We have a lot of recruitment going on and we are ramping up in terms of capacity. As for resourcing, we received the funding we requested. I would say we are in as good a place as we have ever been in terms of our ability to respond.
I can speak a bit about the HSE attack, which the Deputy mentioned. Essentially, how these groups operate is that they have what are known as "affiliates". They are almost like franchisees who will carry out the attack for a larger group, and then the larger group will deploy the malware. As was said, they can be hired on dark web forums or through direct connections.
The Deputy raised the rising tensions in Europe.
We are currently operating at a heightened state of preparedness. As a result of the recent incidents the Deputy has mentioned and ongoing tensions in eastern Europe, we have contingency plans in place. We have also issued a number of guidance documents and supports to industry over the past number of weeks.
Over the weekend, we issued an advisory on the rising tensions and an assessment of how it could impact the State and some advice to our constituents, including a document called the cyber vitals, which contains the key measures organisations should be taking when there is this heightened cyberthreat. I think that has answered the questions the Deputy had asked. Did I miss anything?
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