‘Sleepless nights’ for officials over IT attacks

Senior IT systems officials in the Department of Social Protection have admitted to “sleepless nights” over the possibility of hackers disrupting or bringing down its payments network.

Niall Barry, the assistant secretary of information systems at the department, also revealed that one of the country’s two main data centres was knocked offline due to flooding last year.

Speaking before a meeting of the Oireachtas committee on jobs, social protection and education, Mr Barry said the reason for having two main data centres was if one was not working the other would ensure the system continued to operate.