Mr. Stefan Umit Uygur:

I come from an industry background. I am purely technical. I only entered entrepreneurship in the past five years. Based on personal experience of what I have seen globally, you cannot jump into international collaboration if you are not ready or prepared. If you are not prepared, you cannot level with those. You cannot even understand them. You cannot respond or give them feedback. What are you going to exchange with them? It first boils down to in-house preparation. The Deputy referred to a piece of software and compared it to an alarm. Before buying a piece of software or an alarm, you first have to create doors and windows, and make sure they are closed and so on. Technically, we call it cyberhygiene and cyberawareness. Believe it or not, 70% of cybersecurity and cyberdefence coverage can be done without a piece of software or anything else, but simply by making small tweaks. Simple things like a complex password or multi-factor authentication will make it difficult for a criminal to break into your system.

We have to start from the basics. Everyone has to take civic action. As the Chair mentioned earlier, every citizen has to be involved, informed and trained to a high level. I am not saying that everyone has to become a cybersecurity expert. Doing cyberhygiene means you have covered up to 70% of defence and have left a gap of only 30%. You then know where the gap is and where you are exposed. You then speak to industry and tell them what you need. It is based on need. That is why Israel is good. They do not just create a product out of the blue and say it is the best product. Why is it the best product? Israel is surrounded by 19 enemy nations and has to defend itself every day. It is based on need. That is what I learned when I visited the Yitzhak Rabin Center. They told me they are good because they have the necessity. We have to do the same, based on necessity.

Everyone should start from the basics. Anyone can secure their phone. We know how to use it. Simple things will help industry. We have to make a huge jump. You can then start to support local organisations and strengthen local start-ups. That will also create an economy. We talk about competing with FDI and multinationals. Nobody wants to compete with them. They are not the enemy. There is a just an imbalance there. Ireland today relies on multinationals by between 65% and 70%. Only 30% to 35% of its reliance is on local companies. That is why the country is so fragile. When multinationals lay people off, their strategies are completely different from the government or local agenda. The idea is to balance that. That comes after cyberhygiene and after everyone has done their part in their house and on their phone through basic tweaks and configuration. Following that, the common objective should be balancing the nation's reliance on multinationals and local organisations 50:50. We are not targeting multinationals as evil. They are not evil. They are welcome to join. However, we have to balance it. Right now there is no balance, and that is why the State is so fragile. It is frightened every time there are lay-offs and they plug out stuff.