{"id":212899,"date":"2025-12-03T09:10:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-03T09:10:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/212899\/"},"modified":"2025-12-03T09:10:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-03T09:10:12","slug":"hostile-states-may-target-ireland-during-eu-presidency-cybersecurity-experts-warn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/212899\/","title":{"rendered":"Hostile states may target Ireland during EU presidency, cybersecurity experts warn"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n Ireland\u2019s forthcoming presidency of the EU is likely to heighten the chance of the country being targeted by \u201chostile states\u201d, a cybersecurity conference has heard.<\/p>\n

\n The country’s second National Cyber Security Conference\u00a0heard from assistant garda commissioner Michael McElgunn that \u201cwe have to be mindful that we are approaching the presidency of the EU and [are] likely to be a target of hostile states in terms of intelligence gathering\u201d.<\/p>\n

\n Ireland will serve its presidency from July 1, 2026, until the end of that year. Mr McElgunn added that those hostile states will also likely seek to \u201cexercise influence\u201d via cyberactivity.<\/p>\n

\n Director of the NCSC itself, Richard Browne, said the centre \u201cknew full well\u201d that the presidency of the bloc is likely to cause issues in terms of attracting unwanted attention for the State.<\/p>\n

\n He said those attacks would likely include attacks on service providers, but also \u201cpotentially in the disinformation space\u201d.<\/p>\n

\n \u201cWe\u2019re prepared for that, we\u2019re doing the risk assessment… to build our own response plan to the presidency,\u201d Mr Browne said, adding that the plan will \u201cevolve over time\u201d.<\/p>\n

\n Mr Browne \u2014 who took over his role in January 2022, six months after a cyberattack brought the HSE to its knees, said Ireland has, since that date, grown in capability in terms of its cyber defences and is now regarded by the rest of Europe as being \u201can advanced counterpart\u201d.<\/p>\n

\n \u201cWe\u2019re a top-tier European operation centre,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s great, but we still have to evolve.\u201d<\/p>\n

Artificial intelligence<\/p>\n

\n Mr Browne said there are three broad cyber risks facing Ireland at present \u2014 the geopolitical risk surrounding conflicts such as that between Russia and Ukraine; changes in tech, particularly in the field of artificial intelligence<\/a>; and potential supply chain disruption.<\/p>\n

\"DirectorDirector of the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), Richard Browne: ‘Nation state actors are heavy and early adopters of AI… it\u2019s a given.’ Picture: Maxwells<\/p>\n

\n He said digital services are \u201cheavily dependent on a vendor ecosystem that\u2019s both global in nature and opaque in character\u201d, making them especially vulnerable.<\/p>\n

\n Regarding the evolution of AI, Mr Browne said he believes the world \u201cis still just in the foothill of this particular Everest\u201d.\u00a0\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cThis is just the start of a very long journey,\u201d he said, adding that the battle over AI will see \u201ccyber have-nots\u201d \u2014 that is those with less affinity for tech \u2014 targeted, \u201cparticularly in the national security space\u201d.<\/p>\n

\n \u201cNation state actors are heavy and early adopters of AI… it\u2019s a given,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Scams<\/p>\n

\n While the conference heard from the NCSC, the Defence Forces, and Garda\u00ed\u00a0about unprecedented collaboration between those units with the goal of defending Ireland\u2019s cybersecurity, it also heard about how cyber safety begins at home.<\/p>\n

\n Director of operations at the NCSC, Colm Stapleton, noted that phishing scams \u2014 people being lured into clicking into nefarious emails or links \u2014 are still the dominant incidents that the centre comes across.<\/p>\n

\n \u201cHumans are the weak point,\u201d he said, adding that simply changing a password regularly \u2014 and always changing a default password \u2014 \u201cstill does solve most problems\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ireland\u2019s forthcoming presidency of the EU is likely to heighten the chance of the country being targeted by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":212900,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[261],"tags":[291,289,3498,290,982,18,19,17,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-212899","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificial-intelligence-ai","11":"tag-artificialintelligence","12":"tag-cybersecurity","13":"tag-eire","14":"tag-ie","15":"tag-ireland","16":"tag-technology"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115654861156850569","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212899\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/212900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}