Paul Kehoe (Wexford, Fine Gael)
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Question 574: To ask the Minister for Defence the procedures in place to protect personal data within his Department; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [31236/07]

Willie O'Dea (Limerick East, Fianna Fail)
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Personal data held in electronic form in my Department and the Defence Forces is protected by the application of a stringent security policy, on access controlled servers, with mandatory features such as password protection, user authentication, assignment of rights to designated users only, the installation and monitoring of firewalls and other protective hardware. Daily backups by way of offsite secure data storage ensure that data is both protected and recoverable on demand. Encryption is used as necessary and data transmission is via secured links only.

All physical files containing personal data relating to staff and external parties are retained in secure locations under restricted access procedures.

All data is maintained under the terms of the Data Protection Acts 1988 and 2003, as amended from time to time. Any request for the release of such data is dealt with under the terms of the Freedom of Information Acts, 1997 and 2003, as amended from time to time.