Peadar Tóibín
Question:331. Deputy Peadar Tóibín asked the Minister for Defence the investment made by his Department and State agencies under its remit in each year in cyber security for the past ten years. [28842/21]
View answerTuesday, 25 May 2021
Questions (331)
Written answers
My Department implements a security-by-design and defence-in-depth approach to cybersecurity. My Department migrated its core IT infrastructure to the Office of the Government Chief Information Officer (OGCIO) under the 'Build to Share Managed Desktop' shared service in 2020.
The Government’s services are still actively involved in managing and remediating the recent cyberattack on the HSE. Our technical staff continue to operate and monitor all relevant systems to the highest levels, and are closely engaged with experts in the OGCIO and the NCSC to seek to ensure that we follow best practice as it relates to all aspects of cybersecurity. For operational and security reasons, we are advised by the NCSC not to disclose details of systems and processes which could in any way compromise those efforts. In particular, it is not considered appropriate to disclose information which might assist criminals to assess potential vulnerabilities in departmental cybersecurity arrangements. Therefore it is not considered appropriate to disclose particular arrangements in place in relation to cyber security tools and services and my Department does not comment on operational security matters.
There are no separate figures available for IT and email security costs in my Department as security is an integrated aspect of all ICT services. I have set out the details of ICT related expenditure incurred by my Department over the past 10 years in the table below. The costs incurred do not relate to internal staffing costs, but do include costs of hardware, software, licences, support and maintenance services.
|
Year |
Expenditure (incl. VAT) |
|
2010 |
€1,947,421 |
|
2011 |
€2,677,588 |
|
2012 |
€1,247,948 |
|
2013 |
€1,069,881 |
|
2014 |
€2,662,670 |
|
2015 |
€2,582,645 |
|
2016 |
€2,820,752 |
|
2017 |
€2,983,020 |
|
2018 |
€3,274,199 |
|
2019 |
€2,587,180 |
|
2020 |
€4,559,917 |