Ireland ICT Building Digital Resiliency Key Focus for Irish Industry and Government

Since Ireland received its major wake-up call on cybersecurity with the significant ransomware attack on its health service in May 2021, the government and national security agencies have undertaken a series of measures to strengthen the nation’s cyber resilience and prime critical national infrastructure organizations to comply with the EU’s NIS2 Directive and Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA).

In June 2023, the Irish Government published the National Cyber Risk Assessment (NCRA) which cited the systemic cyber risks faced by Ireland’s critical national infrastructure (CNI) from a range of threats such as espionage and destructive cyber-attacks.  The NCRA also stressed the importance of supply chain security in digital technologies within key CNI sectors including energy, transport, financial services, healthcare and telecommunications alongside government and public sector IT systems that deliver many of these services.

Prepared by Ireland’s National Center for Cyber Security (NCSC), the NCRA listed three key recommendations to bolster cyber resilience in Ireland; specifically (1) Strengthen legislative provisions to ensure that the operators of essential and important services, service providers, and technology vendors embed appropriate cyber security measures in their products and services from the outset; (2) Develop a framework to manage strategic supply chain dependency risks for critical and sensitive services; and (3) Establish a central register of all essential and important entities in the State.  The proposals were subsequently incorporated as actions in the Government’s Mid-Term Review of Ireland National Cyber Security Strategy 2019-2024 published in July 2023.  The strategy review also accentuated further GOI investment for building the capacity of the NCSC particularly to bolster its ability to monitor and respond to cybersecurity incidents and developing threats such as ransomware.

The ongoing threat of cyber-attacks is driving increased spending on cybersecurity solutions and services across all major end user segments.  Solutions utilizing Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) have a growing market share within the critical national infrastructure segment.  U.S. cybersecurity vendors are playing a leading role in the Irish market while Irish distributors, systems integrators and value-added resellers (VARs) continually seek to identify and source the latest innovative cybersecurity solutions from the United States.

For more information on Ireland’s cybersecurity sector, please contact Padraig O’Connor at U.S. Commercial Service Ireland via Padraig.O’Connor@trade.gov.