Vol. 529 No. 1
443 Mr. Durkan asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and Rural Development the number of occasions on which viruses occurred in incoming e-mails in his Department in the past 12 months; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [2540/01]
Viruses arrive on e-mail every day. All incoming mail to the Department's network is scanned by anti-virus software and any virus found is removed before the message is delivered to the recipient. The anti-virus software is updated every fortnight or as required. Records are not kept on the amount of viruses received by the Department, but a manual check of the anti-virus logs shows an average of 80 e-mails per day are cleaned by the anti-virus software. To date, no virus has impacted on the day to day working of the Department.
444 Mr. Durkan asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and Rural Development the number of occasions on which hackers have attempted to breach his Department's e-mail security in the past 12 months; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [2555/01]
The Department has both hardware and software in place to protect the Department's network from hackers. In addition to these facilities, the Department is further protected by Civil Service wide security facilities operated by the Department of Finance. The Department does not have any record of intrusions by hackers but to date the work of the Department has not been impacted by any attempted hacker intrusion.
