Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael)
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Question 207: To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Finance if he is satisfied that personal information relating to members of the public held on his departmental databases is safe from hackers; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [34283/07]

Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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All of my Departmental databases including those holding personal information relating to members of the public are protected from hackers by modern firewall infrastructures. The first layer of protection is provided at the Government Network Internet access point with a further layer located at the Department's access point to the Government Network. Both infrastructures provide industry standard intrusion protection and are constantly monitored on a 24/7 basis. Within my Department's IT infrastructure, all of the databases are further protected from unauthorized access through the use of individual access permissions set up by the IT system administrators. These access permissions are multi-layered at PC, server and application level.