Mr. Cian FitzGerald:

I hope I am not speaking out of turn but the cost of cyberattacks to businesses in the State is billions of euro, as the Deputy acknowledged. The concern is that should more critical entities be targeted, there would be an accompanying misinformation or disinformation campaign designed to erode confidence in public institutions. One of the additional concerns, which we have noticed as part of our investigation, is that we often see either hackers for hire or groups acting on behalf of state entities who carry out what are seemingly ransomware attacks but are really wiper attacks. The concern is that we may see businesses being targeted and that we misidentify the threat as run-of-the-mill cybercriminality that is opportunistic, when, in fact, there may be something more co-ordinated behind it. That is the whole point about this area. Grey zone warfare is designed to operate so it is incremental and slow, and we are not supposed to notice it until suddenly everything has changed. This is certainly part of it.