Professor Donna O'Shea:

I will highlight that we have been working on cyber-resilience of citizens for a number of years. We obtained funding through the SFI discover programme. We call our programme "Cyber Futures", and it is to increase and improve the cyber-resilience of citizens.

I want to let the Chair and the committee know that it is very difficult. Developing a cybersecurity awareness programme for our citizens to improve their cyber-resilience means having to look at the various demographics in society. National schools, secondary schools, third level students and senior citizens who want to know about their banking information will have different awareness programmes. College students need to be given information about money mule scams and Tinder swindling. It is a different campaign for each group. This is very difficult for us to manage. There is also the longitudinal impact of these types of programmes. We are all funded through public funding. Cyber Futures is funded through SFI. It is dedicated to education and public engagement on cybersecurity. The impact of this programme will not be seen for a decade. This is a problem because it is difficult to track and measure it. It is longitudinal in nature.

I want to highlight a national initiative we led out last Christmas. It is check.cyberskills.ie. It specifically addresses the scam links received in emails and text messages. The link can be typed into check.cyberskills.ieand, with a high degree of accuracy, it states whether the link is most likely authentic or legitimate. We have developed this in collaboration with An Garda Síochána, Trend Micro and CONNECT and CONFIRM which are two SFI research centres. A lot of work is being done but it is difficult and challenging and the impact will not be seen now, tomorrow or the day after and this is a problem.