Results 2,321-2,340 of 2,990 for speaker:Ossian Smyth

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport: National Cyber Security Centre Review: Discussion (22 Sep 2021)

Ossian Smyth: The involvement of people from academia is critical because they are at the cutting edge of knowledge which is constantly changing. We need people who are researchers and keeping up with the changing technology. We also need to have third level institutions educating people who will be the cybersecurity staff of the future. Many academics helped us to deal with the cyberattack on the HSE....

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport: National Cyber Security Centre Review: Discussion (22 Sep 2021)

Ossian Smyth: A European directive tells us that we must have a list of critical infrastructure organisations or operators of essential services and keep track of what is included on it. It is not always that obvious. Electricity and water service providers are included, but we might not think about many other essential parts of the economy in the same way. What we do is to provide those organisations...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport: National Cyber Security Centre Review: Discussion (22 Sep 2021)

Ossian Smyth: I thank the Chair. One must look at this in the context of a sixfold increase in cyberattacks in the past two years. Any organisation that faces a sixfold increase in its workload will without doubt be challenged and it cannot magic skilled staff out of nowhere no matter how much money is available. The report absolutely did not say that the NCSC was unfit for purpose but that it needed...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport: National Cyber Security Centre Review: Discussion (22 Sep 2021)

Ossian Smyth: I do not think that it is fair at all. I have read the report and really do not see it saying that the centre is structurally unfit for purpose but certain recommendations were made. We knew that the NCSC needed more resources in response to an escalating threat and escalating workload. That is why we commissioned the report to see where should the money be spent and where should the...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport: National Cyber Security Centre Review: Discussion (22 Sep 2021)

Ossian Smyth: All of those machines will have to be upgraded at some point. Some of them are connected to very large, expensive legacy pieces of hardware, such as MRI machines or X-ray devices, which cannot cope with the newer versions of Windows software. In a large portion of the cases, perhaps half, that is the reason the Windows 7 computers are there. That involves either the manufacturer of the...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport: National Cyber Security Centre Review: Discussion (22 Sep 2021)

Ossian Smyth: I am sure that is something Mr. Paul Reid is looking at. I think that was part of the Estimates, that Mr. Reid mentioned a figure of €100 million for the remediation of his network. Certainly, part of that will refer to Windows 7. They are well capable of doing a strategy and having an upgrade path. However, there is too much focus on upgrading the Windows 7 computers. It is...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport: National Cyber Security Centre Review: Discussion (22 Sep 2021)

Ossian Smyth: Part of that will be decided in the coming weeks in the budget discussions. There have been estimates of what was needed for this year. There was a large increase in the cybersecurity budget last year. Overall, the NCSC's budget is a small portion of the cybersecurity expenditure to protect the State. All the money that is spent on cybersecurity to protect Ireland's national...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport: National Cyber Security Centre Review: Discussion (22 Sep 2021)

Ossian Smyth: Yes, I do, and the Government accepts them as well.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport: National Cyber Security Centre Review: Discussion (22 Sep 2021)

Ossian Smyth: Yes, we are.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport: National Cyber Security Centre Review: Discussion (22 Sep 2021)

Ossian Smyth: There are two parts to it. There is a capital budget and a current budget. The total budget between capital and current was approaching €7 million. For next year, 2022, that will be the subject of discussion with the Ministers for Public Expenditure and Reform and the Environment, Climate and Communications, Deputies Michael McGrath and Eamon Ryan, respectively, who will agree how...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport: National Cyber Security Centre Review: Discussion (22 Sep 2021)

Ossian Smyth: The Deputy said the attack happened because of a lack of capacity. I want to see the two reports that are coming out before I make a decision on the view I will take on what caused the attack. I will allow that time to see what happened. The Deputy mentioned the UK and its £2 billion spend. There is also the United States. The Deputy has to accept that those countries, with their...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport: National Cyber Security Centre Review: Discussion (22 Sep 2021)

Ossian Smyth: I do not have the final report stating what caused the attack. Other countries which had a far larger spend or a far broader security apparatus would be subjected to the same kinds of attacks. When the NCSC warned that there could be a ransomware attack on Irish healthcare, that was in response to 16 US hospitals that had been taken down by ransomware attackers, so it is an increasing...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport: National Cyber Security Centre Review: Discussion (22 Sep 2021)

Ossian Smyth: Yes, absolutely. This kind of attack is easy to originate. You can originate it from any part of the world and direct it suddenly from one continent to another. You cannot defend against it without co-operation, so it absolutely requires co-operation between like-minded nations to deal with it. During the response to the ransomware attack on the HSE, we were contacted by the Polish...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport: National Cyber Security Centre Review: Discussion (22 Sep 2021)

Ossian Smyth: The Deputy is absolutely right. There is no intention to try to provide a central protection for all State bodies from 70 people working in Dublin who will offer some kind of centralised support across all these organisations. It has to be distributed. Most of the effort and work to protect people will have to happen in a distributed way at the site where people are trying to protect...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport: National Cyber Security Centre Review: Discussion (22 Sep 2021)

Ossian Smyth: I am not aware of any cybersecurity centre in the world that is run by the military. Ours is not run by the military, although it has military assistance and that is a very valuable input. On the director's salary and whether there is enough money to pay that person, the job of the director who will be appointed on a salary of €184,000 is not directly equivalent to a chief...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport: National Cyber Security Centre Review: Discussion (22 Sep 2021)

Ossian Smyth: In short, we will bring in experts. It was the plan to bring in experts for this process. The board also has expertise but we will bring in external experts in this area. I will go back to Senator Craughwell's question. He mentioned the idea that we should have some kind of overall head of all the different parts of cybersecurity and cyberdefence across the different branches of the...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport: National Cyber Security Centre Review: Discussion (22 Sep 2021)

Ossian Smyth: In terms of the security incident with the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Deputy Coveney, his phone was encrypted and the security incident was reported to the NCSC. I assure the Senator that the centre took it extremely seriously and as a matter of national security because of his position as Minister for Foreign Affairs. In no regard was this treated as a trivial matter. All of the...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport: National Cyber Security Centre Review: Discussion (22 Sep 2021)

Ossian Smyth: I thank the Chairman for the reminder. In fact, what I was going to say was that it is a live case. It has not yet been decided and the implications of it are unknown as yet. Scenario planning is done, of course, but it is a live case and I cannot comment. I do not know how it is going to turn out, and that is the reality.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport: National Cyber Security Centre Review: Discussion (22 Sep 2021)

Ossian Smyth: One of the questions the Senator asked was whether the members of the Cabinet understand the seriousness of cybersecurity with reference to foreign direct investment. They do. This is an issue the American Chamber of Commerce and other lobby groups for multinationals bring up because they want to have a secure environment in which to locate their data and do business. That is completely...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport: National Cyber Security Centre Review: Discussion (22 Sep 2021)

Ossian Smyth: In fact, a task force with all those members was set up in 2011. We will review it in light of this capacity review and any specific recommendations they have about it. We actually have that in place. If there is some way in which it needs to be-----