Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael)
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Question 1446: To ask the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources the number of and the records kept by his Department of attempted hacking or suspected cyber attacks or other malicious computer security breaches committed against his Department's computer systems. [1720/08]

Eamon Ryan (Dublin South, Green Party)
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Virtually every computer or network connected to the internet is being probed for vulnerabilities by third parties. My Department's network is no exception, and it receives a high volume of spurious traffic. There is no record kept of these probes. The traffic is stopped by firewalls on the Department's IT system.

All traffic that is permitted through the external firewall is inspected by a network Intrusion Detection System, which monitors the perimeter of the network for suspicious activity. This device inspects the millions of packets of data that enter and leave the network daily. Most of this traffic is legitimate, including email, Internet access by staff, et cetera, but if there are suspicious packets of data addressed to the Department's network on a daily basis, these are identified, inspected, catalogued and logged by the system.

Over the last nine months the analysis of incoming traffic by the system has not identified any attempt to hack or infiltrate the network, however, there have been over 65,000 occurrences of spyware, viruses, malware, et cetera, recognised by the system. The objective of all these is, of course, to compromise computers on the network.

In addition to the intrusion detection system there are additional safeguards in the form of secondary firewalls, web content filtering, multiple anti-virus, anti-spyware and anti spam devices installed to block dangerous traffic and protect the network. The portfolio of measures that operates to protect the network of the Department would be considered best practice in the State or private sectors.