John O'Mahony (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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Question 1148: To ask the Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism the procedures in place to ensure that personal data stored by his Department is secure. [30124/08]

Martin Cullen (Waterford, Fianna Fail)
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The IT Network of the Department is part of the Government Virtual Private Network (VPN) and, as such, is initially protected against intrusion by the VPN firewall. Beyond this level, the network is also protected by the Department's own firewall system. The traffic that is allowed through the firewall is further filtered for so-called 'spam' and the traffic that is subsequently allowed through that process is filtered for viruses and for content. No breaches of the firewall security systems in place have been made to date.

A Virtual Private Network also controls remote access to the Department's network, while internal access to the Department's network is controlled by username and password authentication. There is a further layer of password security for users using email on the network.

The Department is also rolling out data encryption software to enhance the security that already exists on its portable devices such as laptops.

John O'Mahony (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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Question 1149: To ask the Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism the number of laptop computers, data storage devices and USB memory sticks that have been stolen or lost from his Department in 2007 and to date in 2008; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [30139/08]

Martin Cullen (Waterford, Fianna Fail)
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Since the beginning of 2007 to date, two blackberry communication devices have been lost. Neither of the devices in question held sensitive or personal information and both devices were remotely disabled following the loss. In the same period, one stand alone desktop computer was stolen.

Neither sensitive nor personal information is stored by default on desktop or portable data devices in the Department and officials are requested not to save any such information onto the devices. This information is stored only on the Department's IT network, to which access is controlled by password protection and by firewall security systems.

The National Archives, an institution which is also part of my Department, has not had any laptops, mobile devices or memory keys lost or stolen during the period in question. Correspondingly, no sensitive data has been lost.