Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 9 February 2023

Public Accounts Committee

2021 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 38 - Health
Chapter 12 - Financial Impact of Cyber Security Attack

9:30 am

Mr. Fran Thompson:

It is a real arms race between the attackers and the defenders. Cybersecurity companies are helping and supporting us and we have "best in class" cyber companies supporting what we do. A huge number of attacks daily are notified to us. Some of them are benign but must be followed up. I think we received about 40,000 notifications last year. We followed these up and produced reports on a number of them. We then take action where required. Part of this is around the speed of the response and how we deal with it. It is not just about the notifications. It is also about having all the processes and procedures in place to deal with the response very quickly.