Noel Rock (Dublin North West, Fine Gael)
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286. To ask the Minister for Social Protection the actions his Department is taking to strengthen against cyber attacks after the National Treasury Management Agency website was temporarily down for several hours after a suspected hacking attack; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [6887/17]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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My Department invests on an ongoing basis in traditional, defence-in-depth deployments of preventative controls like firewalls and endpoint protection and advanced threat detection tools. My Department also employs security technology that, together with a dedicated ICT security team and well defined processes, continually monitors the Department’s network and services.

My Department was notified of the attack against the NTMA shortly after the NTMA service was taken offline. The ICT Security team examined the nature of the vulnerability and reviewed all relevant assets to assess the Department’s exposure to the threat. The result of the assessment was that the asset that gave rise to the vulnerability for the NTMA is not in use by any of the Department’s systems and that the Department was and is not at risk from this vulnerability.

My Department will continue to take a proactive approach to securing its network and assets.