The function of a CERT is to provide trusted and independent advice to organisations and individuals on how best to secure their systems against attack from unauthorised people and to provide services to help recover in the event those systems are attacked. Ireland is one of the only countries that does not have a CERT in place

As we move to base our economy on the “knowledge economy” our country will become more and more dependent on our IT resources and infrastructure. Recent attacks against the national infrastructure of countries such as Estonia demonstrate how effective a coordinated attack can be against critical online services.

Other countries such as the UK, US, Germany, Australia and New Zealand have also publicly identified repeated attempts at foreign state sponsored industrial espionage against indigenous technology companies.

It is my belief that if we do not have such a body in Ireland to ensure the security of the Irish Internet space we will leave many individuals, businesses and our economy vulnerable to attack.

I have campaigned for a number of years to have a trusted, independent and non-commercial entity established to provide such a service in this country. Ideally this should be a state sponsored entity to ensure no commercial or other influences. Whether this body should be located within the Dept of Communications is not the issue. The issue is we should have such a service full stop.

As a result of lack of progress in this area, late last year I established an independent not-for-profit entity, the Irish Reporting and Information Security Service (IRISS http://www.iriss.ie) to run a cut down version of a CERT. IRISS provides its services to Irish organisations free of charge. It is run and managed by a core of volunteers who are recognised as some of Ireland’s top experts in information security. Due to the small funding we have we cannot provide the full services that a proper CERT should but we aim to hopefully build up our resources over time.

Since its inception in early November 2008 IRISS have been instrumental in shutting down two Phishing websites based here in Ireland, helping secure fifteen Irish SSH accounts that had been compromised and dealing with a privacy breach of an Irish online retailer which inadvertently exposed its customer records onto the Internet. IRISS has also alerted subscribers to a phishing attack against Irish credit unions, to a number of domain renewal scams and on numerous critical vulnerabilities in the systems and software they employ within their infrastructures.

Proper support and funding will ensure that a dedicated CERT is established to provide the above services and more in a more sustainable, responsive and dedicated way.

Every element of report is open for commenting at http://nextleap.wordpress.com/ so please give in your thoughts on how it could be improved, what we should have asked, and what the next steps should be.

As part of that initiative I thought that it would be great to have a social network where students could interact and give feedback on the project generally. With that in mind we put in place a simple Ning site.

Unfortunately we had to abandon it because most of the schools have policies in place which do not allow their students use social networks on school computers. Apparantly there are issues around bullying with some social networks and hence the situation we encountered.

Personally I believe that, properly used, social networks, and other web2 technologies, could make a hugely positive impact in a wide variety of educational circumstances, but it is difficult to see how this can happen at present.

On a more general – and fundamental – issue, I believe we should educate children for their own sake. Do it for the sake of their personal competitiveness and national competitiveness will take care of itself! But…sin sceal eile!

Paul Rellis, Managing Director of Microsoft, who chaired the event launching the report, did not push me to conclude anything one way or another. Equally, the Tanaiste, who launched the report, didnt have that kind of say ether. I am an indepenent researcher. That’s important to clarify at the outset.

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To get back to your point

One of the stakeholders made a good point: the level of digital literacy should not be dependent on the level of interest in the home. That’s hard to argue with. Nobody made any particular point about laptops for kids or any thing like that. If you look at the relevant part of the report, on of the suggestions on the equippment side is to exempt all school ICT equipment from VAT. Take a look http://tinyurl.com/7u2wyx . It is not too hard to imagine a situation where SDKs are rolled out in the curriculum, stimulating like the young scientists projects.

Right now there is a problem in a number of areas at third level that are not getting adequate feed of applicants from 2nd level. See the latest reports by the expert group on future skills needs, and this was backed up by stakeholders in larger organisations who said they didnt have enough of a pool in Ireland from which to hire. David O’Meara went on record saying that at an IIEA event a few months ago. So take an area like engineering, for example, for future steve wozniaks, things like this (http://www.wired.com/reviews/product/pr_thameskosmos_workshop) at a very young age might be invaluable early stimulants. (That’s just a simple idea, and hardly one to base a curriculum on). The school system has a role to play in national competitiveness.

I’m starting from the point of view that we’re already aiming for that.

Are we? I’ve heard that it would be nice, I didn’t see the plan to do this. A computer is a tool, like a garden hoe, pouring millions into a plan to get people to use said hoe in their school environment doesn’t mean that we’ll become the greatest agricultural nation on earth, it means we have a high percentage of school kids who know how to do a few things with a hoe as taught in school. Totally not the same thing.

A number of years ago my better half and some colleagues took some laptops and content from a major IT company and evaluated it for use in Schools (shes a teacher). Their report was damning and effectively said “this is a nice way to sell laptops but does nothing for schools”.

The IT company’s marketing people basically ignored the proper evaluation of the technology.

Slowly technology is creeping more into schools – on the basis of value to the teachers and the students. Its based on really good content that helps kids learn not on selling technology. Its done by smart teachers learning from each other and through sites like this
http://anseo.net/blog2/?p=472

You’re right on the literacy. We have an adult population that is 20% functionally illiterate.

The analogy to the Irish language is a good one

Dermot

I’m starting from the point of view that we’re already aiming for that.

Here’s the bad news: The Department of Education Inspectorate’s 2008 report on ICT in Schools found that almost a third of primary school students in classes surveyed were computer illiterate to the extent that they were incapable of connecting to the Internet or of printing a document.

Even worse news…

The National Council for Curriculum & Assessment (NCCA) has developed a framework for the use of ICT in schools as a tool for learning – but without the Dept. of Finance and Dept. of Education signing up, it has gone nowhere.

- see more about this in TREND 1: A Globally Competitive Generation with “Digital Instincts” – http://tinyurl.com/7mcu6r