The National Cyber Security Index or NCSI focuses on cyber security aspects that are implemented by governments around the world.

Analysing these fields helps to identify the gaps in policies and strategies that should be tackled to improve a country’s cyber security.

The National Cyber Security Index has ranked Ireland as number forty in its list that measures the preparedness of countries to prevent cyber threats and manage cyber incidents… https://ncsi.ega.ee/ncsi-index/?order=rank

It is disappointing to see Ireland not taking more of a leadership role when it comes to cyber security especially when we can also see that our European counterparts hold the top thirteen ranking positions.

When we break down these scores it becomes clear that certain aspects contributed to Ireland not scoring as well as we might have hoped. While most of these factors are out of our control and fall to the government to resolve, we can contribute in our own way.
Three areas mentioned by the National Cyber Security Index for us, the general public to consider are:

1. Cyber safety competencies in primary or secondary education

This area states that our government should include cyber safety and computer safety competences in our primary or secondary education curricula.

Currently both primary and post primary schools currently provide formalized education on online safety. The Department of Education and Skills provides for online safety through a range of programs, including the formal curriculum content, teacher professional development, strategies around wellbeing, bullying and the use of innovative materials.

It is important that you highlight this education to your children as it is thought in schools. Secure Target offers training and awareness to schools for this area. If you feel that there is not enough emphasis on this in your child’s school, then please feel free to inform us as we would be happy to reach out to any school and encourage training and awareness in online safety.

2. Cyber safety and security website

Public authorities are urged to provide at least one cyber safety and security website for cyber security and ICT professionals, and regular users. The Irish government has provided such a resource at https://www.webwise.ie/ .
We would be happy to explain the important aspects of this website and help parents or schools with activities such as “Safer Internet Day”.

3. Cyber security responsibility for digital service providers

Finally, we turn to digital service providers. According to legislation, digital service providers (except micro and small enterprises): (1) must manage cyber/ICT risks or (2) must implement established cyber/information security requirements. This legislation is provided by the EU and can be viewed in the following PDF…
https://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/2018/si/360/made/en/pdf

In brief, as digital service providers we are obligated to obtain certain standards of cyber security. Secure Target can outline and/or implement for your company the minimum cyber security standards required by law.

All you need to do is contact us and we can handle it from there.