Recent Cyberattack and its Impact on the Health System: Statements
Dail Éireann — 2021-05-18
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Ossian Smyth (GP), Dún Laoghaire

All the time, these software attacks are upgraded in response to the cybersecurity people putting in defences against them. It is an arms race. There is a continuing battle between the two. It is something that we just have to continue with. We cannot fight it alone. We have been attacked but the same and variants of this software have attacked sites successfully in the United States, including the Colonial Pipeline attack, and the attacks within the UK, despite the fact that it has agencies such as the National Security Agency and GCHQ with much wider, better-funded defence powers and with powers of mass surveillance. Despite its surveillance of all this data coming in and out of the country and coming out of the sites, it was still hit by these attackers. We can see this is a world-wide problem and there is a common interest in defeating this, which can only be done by the sharing of information between nation states.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2021-05-18/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:49:17+00:00
Sitting date: 2021-05-18