Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les has again re­it­er­at­ed that he is pre­pared to ap­pear be­fore Par­lia­ment’s Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee to deal with the cy­ber breach at the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion Ser­vices of T&T (TSTT).

Gon­za­les made the com­ment yes­ter­day, af­ter Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress MP Bar­ry Padarath called for the JSC to sum­mon Gon­za­les af­ter Mon­day’s sting­ing state­ments by for­mer TSTT CEO Lisa Agard and CFO Shi­va Ram­nar­ine about how the board han­dled the mat­ter.

Gon­za­les re­in­forced his re­cent po­si­tion that he was will­ing to ap­pear be­fore the JSC if need­ed (as he’d said af­ter the first JSC on the TSTT is­sue in Jan­u­ary).

“And I main­tain that po­si­tion, but I will not be dis­tract­ed by the sideshow pol­i­tics that’s be­ing mount­ed,” Gon­za­les added, re­fer­ring to Padarath’s com­ments.

In a state­ment, Padarath said, “Sev­er­al crit­i­cal is­sues of na­tion­al im­por­tance have now arisen in the af­ter­math of Mon­day’s tes­ti­monies by (Lisa) Agard and (Shi­va) Ram­nar­ine that on­ly the min­is­ter could an­swer.”

Padarath called on Gon­za­les to tell the JSC: If Agard com­mu­ni­cat­ed di­rect­ly with him pro­vid­ing up­dat­ed ac­cu­rate in­for­ma­tion that he chose to dis­re­gard on Oc­to­ber 31, 2023; if Gon­za­les, through TSTT’s Board, placed a “gag or­der” on TSTT’s ex­ec­u­tive man­age­ment af­ter the cy­ber­at­tacks; who in­struct­ed the board to fire Agard and Ram­nar­ine; why TSTT’s Board hasn’t been fired; if Gon­za­les had a “role” in the ap­point­ment of TSTT act­ing CEO Kent West­ern; if Gon­za­les was made aware of the Oc­to­ber 3 breach and the board’s al­leged in­sub­or­di­na­tion that “with­held” in­for­ma­tion from Agard and Ram­nar­ine, and if Gon­za­les was aware of the con­flict be­tween them and TSTT’s Board.

Apart from the ex­ter­nal probe in­to the Oc­to­ber 2023 cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty breach at TSTT, which is pro­ject­ed to be com­plet­ed in March, an in­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion of the breach by TSTT is al­so ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed in May.

Gon­za­les spoke on Mon­day about the ex­ter­nal probe, in­di­cat­ing he was await­ing that re­port be­fore com­ment­ing on cer­tain TSTT mat­ters.

TSTT chair­man Sean Roach spoke on Jan­u­ary 22 about the time­line for the in­ter­nal probe when TSTT’s man­age­ment ap­peared be­fore the Par­lia­ment’s Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (on State En­ter­pris­es), when the JSC first dealt with the cy­ber breach is­sue.

Sub­se­quent­ly, the JSC al­so called Agard (who was fired af­ter the cy­ber breach in­ci­dent) and Ram­nar­ine (who was al­so fired) be­fore it on Mon­day. Both slammed TSTT’s Board.

Agard al­so com­ment­ed on Gon­za­les’ No­vem­ber 9 state­ment in the Par­lia­ment on TSTT and the cy­ber­at­tack.

Min­is­ter Gon­za­les, who was asked on Mon­day to com­ment on Agard’s com­ments, said he ex­pect­ed the probe he re­quest­ed in­to the in­ci­dent to be ready in March. The ex­ter­nal probe was re­port­ed to in­volve a US firm.

Last De­cem­ber, Gon­za­les said the com­pa­ny which would have con­duct­ed that in­ves­ti­ga­tion was to be “on board” by end of De­cem­ber and once they were, the probe should take two to three months to com­plete. Gon­za­les had said then the re­sults of that ex­ter­nal probe would be made pub­lic.

In the in­ter­nal probe, TSTT had en­gaged lo­cal in­de­pen­dent com­pa­ny Cy­ber­Eye to do a root cause and log analy­sis, as­sess TSTT’s cy­ber se­cu­ri­ty con­trol, threat mon­i­tor­ing, de­tec­tion and oth­er is­sues in­ter­nal­ly.

At the Jan­u­ary 22 JSC meet­ing, TSTT man­age­ment was asked by JSC mem­ber, UNC Sen­a­tor Wade Mark, whether in­struc­tion by the Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter to TSTT to do an in­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty breach had com­menced and if so, where TSTT was with this in­ter­nal probe and how soon TSTT would be able to make that avail­able to the pub­lic.

Roach had then con­firmed to Mark that in­ves­ti­ga­tion had com­menced, adding, “In terms of du­ra­tion of the time be­fore we get the fi­nal re­port - 16 weeks.”

Yes­ter­day, Roach did not re­spond to Guardian Me­dia’s texted query and calls for a time­line on the com­ple­tion of the probes or for com­ment on Agard and Ram­nar­ine’s crit­i­cism of how they han­dled the cy­ber breach mat­ter.