Clare Daly (Dublin Fingal, Independent)
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487. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection if data transmitted between her Department's central server and local branch offices is transmitted via HTTPS or HTTP. [50770/17]

Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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My Department is a major user of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) and invests on an ongoing basis in securing the ICT technical infrastructure and the services and data used in support of our business. This includes 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.

The Department’s offices are connected to the Department’s central data centres located in secured locations in Dublin through a secure Metropolitan Area Network (MAN) running on dedicated dark fibre and through a Wide Area Network (WAN) using dedicated private network links. Data is maintained centrally in the secure data centres at the centre of the network. Data transmissions are between the offices and the data centres. Our offices are connected to the data centres using privately addressed circuits only. These circuits do not use or access or interconnect with the public internet at any point. Data transmitted across the Department’s network uses a variety of transmission and security protocols including HTTPS. There are multiple certificates involved – all with varying start dates and refresh dates.

My Department has well defined policies in relation to the use of the Department’s ICT systems and network resources including all electronic communication systems and equipment and will continue to invest in securing all ICT systems and data.