A ma­jor cy­ber­at­tack on the qui­et Box­ing Day hol­i­day forced the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board of T&T (NIBTT) to close all its of­fices around the coun­try for the rest of the week. In fact, it said it would be re­sum­ing op­er­a­tions on a phased ba­sis in Jan­u­ary 2024 and stopped short of giv­ing a de­fin­i­tive date.

Yes­ter­day, the NIB said it was en­gag­ing the ser­vices of both lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty ex­perts to “spear­head the dis­cov­ery and as­sess­ment to mit­i­gate risk.”

The NIBTT, which pays ben­e­fits to hun­dreds of thou­sands of em­ploy­ees in both the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors, is in pos­ses­sion of crit­i­cal in­for­ma­tion, in­clud­ing per­son­al de­tails of cit­i­zens, their bank­ing in­for­ma­tion and de­tails of their en­tire em­ploy­ment his­to­ry.

In its first state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day, the NIBTT re­vealed the ran­somware at­tack.

“The pub­lic is ad­vised that all of­fices of the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board of T&T (NIBTT) will be closed from Wednes­day 27th to Fri­day 29th De­cem­ber 2023.

“The com­pa­ny is cur­rent­ly as­sess­ing our sys­tems af­ter hav­ing ex­pe­ri­enced a ran­somware at­tack on Tues­day 26th De­cem­ber 2023.”

It added, “All steps are be­ing tak­en to pro­tect our da­ta in­tegri­ty and tech­nol­o­gy hard­ware. We are al­so con­tin­u­ing to dili­gent­ly work with our ex­ter­nal tech­nol­o­gy part­ners to ex­pe­di­tious­ly re­solve this mat­ter.”

In its sec­ond state­ment, NIBTT sought to as­sure cus­tomers that while its of­fices will re­main closed un­til Fri­day (De­cem­ber 29), the clo­sure would not ham­per its ser­vice.

It said, “All sched­uled com­mit­ments have been com­plet­ed for De­cem­ber 2023 and an­tic­i­pates that all fu­ture com­mit­ments for Jan­u­ary 2024 will be ho­n­oured. “Cus­tomers with con­firmed ap­point­ments dur­ing the three-day tem­po­rary clo­sure will be fa­cil­i­tat­ed with a new ap­point­ment dur­ing Jan­u­ary 2024.”

The NIBTT said the cy­ber­at­tack was re­port­ed to the T&T Cy­ber Se­cu­ri­ty In­ci­dent Re­sponse Team (TT-CSIRT) un­der the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, and it was “work­ing with this team to­ward a res­o­lu­tion.”

Mean­while, Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds said yes­ter­day that cy­ber­crimes will in­crease giv­en the wide­spread use of digi­ti­sa­tion and ICT plat­forms and as­sured that mea­sures are be­ing put in place to stem the wave of at­tacks.

“What is to be done is that sys­tems are put in place to pro­tect your­selves against this. Over­see­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s ef­forts and al­so mak­ing, tak­ing re­ports in­ves­ti­gat­ing and mak­ing rec­om­men­da­tions for our im­proved pro­tec­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go against cy­ber­crimes, that process is on the way,” he said on I95FM.

“In the mean­time, there has been some hacks and some in­ter­ven­tions in dif­fer­ent in­sti­tu­tions, these are re­port­ed to the TT-CSIRT and they would in­ves­ti­gate work­ing along with the en­ti­ty and they would come up in ways in which these things could be pre­vent­ed in the fu­ture.”

On­ly last week, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour told the Sen­ate that new laws to deal with cy­ber­crimes will be com­ing to Par­lia­ment soon.

The at­ten­tion to cy­ber­at­tacks came af­ter the re­cent at­tack on Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TSTT) in Oc­to­ber, which saw da­ta for mil­lions of cus­tomers be­ing dumped on the dark web.

Uptick in at­tacks

Cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty ex­pert Rishi Ma­haraj said in the last six months there was an uptick in at­tacks in Trinidad, both in pri­vate and pub­lic sec­tor or­gan­i­sa­tions.

“These types of or­gan­i­sa­tions have a lot of per­son­al in­for­ma­tion such as iden­ti­fi­ca­tion num­bers, ad­dress­es, fi­nan­cial in­for­ma­tion that can be used in fraud­u­lent ac­tiv­i­ties, clone iden­ti­ties and it has harm­ful ef­fects on cit­i­zens,” he ex­plained.

He said it’s time for the Gov­ern­ment to take ac­tion.

“From a cy­ber­crime per­spec­tive it needs to lit­er­al­ly en­hance the laws be­cause the laws we have now are very old and you have to take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion the new at­tacks we have now like phish­ing, ran­somware at­tacks, ex­ter­nal hack­ers out­side of T&T. We need to reg­u­late,” Ma­haraj said.