Chester Sam­bra­no

Lead News­gath­er­ing Ed­i­tor

chester.sam­bra­no@guardian.co.tt

The Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs (AGLA) has de­tect­ed a cy­ber at­tack on its net­work.

In a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day, The Min­istry of Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion said that “This unau­tho­rised and il­le­gal ac­cess has neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ed op­er­a­tions at the AGLA and cer­tain as­so­ci­at­ed Di­vi­sions. Hav­ing tak­en ac­tions to min­imise the threat, an in­ves­ti­ga­tion, in part­ner­ship with lead­ing in­dus­try cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty ex­perts, is on­go­ing.”

In the mean­time, the min­istry said, some ser­vices that are usu­al­ly pro­vid­ed are tem­porar­i­ly un­avail­able.

The re­lease did not in­di­cate when the at­tack oc­curred. How­ev­er, in an on­line post, AGLA in­formed the pub­lic about the dis­rup­tion and ad­vised that any court doc­u­ments served be­tween Fri­day, June 30 2023 to present have not been re­ceived.

“In the cir­cum­stances, we in­vite per­sons in need of af­fect­ing ser­vice of court doc­u­ments to do so via the fol­low­ing op­tions: Emails can be for­ward­ed to so­lic­i­tor­gen­er­al@gov.tt, sgser­vice@gov.tt, chiefgstate­fil­ing@gov.tt, and dpp@gov.tt,” it said.

There will al­so be a phys­i­cal ser­vice via the des­ig­nat­ed of­fi­cers at the Of­fice of the So­lic­i­tor Gen­er­al lo­cat­ed at Tow­er C, Lev­els 17-18, 1A Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain.

“The AGLA apol­o­gis­es for any in­con­ve­nience caused and will up­date the pub­lic on the restora­tion of ser­vices,” it said.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour, SC, and Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Le­gal Af­fairs Renu­ka Sagram­s­ingh-Sook­lal said they could not com­ment as the mat­ter was un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

How­ev­er, Sagram­s­ingh-Sook­lal said, “I have every con­fi­dence that this will be set­tled, and once more in­for­ma­tion can be forth­com­ing, I am sure it will be. In the mean­time, I want to thank the pub­lic for their pa­tience, our staff, es­pe­cial­ly Mr Roger Sealy our di­rec­tor of IT who has been work­ing non­stop around the clock with his IT team and oth­er stake­hold­ers to rec­ti­fy this is­sue.”

In May of this year, the chair­man of Amal­ga­mat­ed Se­cu­ri­ty Ser­vices Lim­it­ed Dr Michael Aboud said cy­ber at­tacks oc­cur in T&T at a rate of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 168 every minute, which un­der­scores the crit­i­cal need for au­thor­i­ties to bol­ster their re­sponse, es­pe­cial­ly with the in­creased pub­lic ac­cess to AI tech­nol­o­gy.

He said gov­ern­ment in­fra­struc­ture, health­care, and large con­glom­er­ates are bear­ing the brunt of these at­tacks.