KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

Min­is­ter of Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion Has­sel Bac­chus is urg­ing peo­ple to take cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty se­ri­ous­ly, as he be­lieves the so­lu­tion to com­bat­ing the in­crease in cy­ber at­tacks is sen­si­tis­ing peo­ple on prop­er se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures.

Ac­cord­ing to Bac­chus, cy­ber at­tacks are not an In­for­ma­tion and Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Tech­nol­o­gy (ICT) is­sue but rather about cor­po­rate risks.

In re­cent months, TSTT, PriceS­mart and Courts have all been at­tacked by a ran­somware group, which re­sult­ed in thou­sands of cus­tomers’ per­son­al in­for­ma­tion be­ing ex­posed, in­clud­ing on the dark web.

The Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Le­gal Af­fairs was al­so a vic­tim of a cy­ber at­tack back in Ju­ly.

In the TSTT cy­ber breach, which oc­curred on Oc­to­ber 9, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s per­son­al in­for­ma­tion was shared on the dark web.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia via phone yes­ter­day, Bac­chus said his min­istry is not silent about the in­crease in cy­ber at­tacks across the coun­try but has been work­ing to ed­u­cate sev­er­al sec­tors of so­ci­ety about pro­tect­ing da­ta.

Bac­chus said, “Cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty at all lev­els must be tak­en se­ri­ous­ly and, if not, will have a dev­as­tat­ing im­pact on your and our busi­ness. Please be cy­ber aware and note that there are in­ter­na­tion­al and lo­cal or­gan­i­sa­tions that can at­tend to the com­pre­hen­sive range of ser­vices re­quired... This has noth­ing to do with build­ing so­phis­ti­cat­ed tools... Those things come lat­er.

“They need ac­cess in­to your net­works. We want pass­words that’s sim­ple to use. You do change it to some­thing, then change it back to what it was. That part of it is where we (Min­istry of Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion) come in, help­ing peo­ple to un­der­stand where we are. Ed­u­cat­ing the old­er pop­u­la­tion as to where we are, work­ing with civ­il so­ci­ety to un­der­stand where we are, en­cour­ag­ing the pri­vate sec­tor to un­der­stand that their busi­ness­es are un­der threat and there­fore they need to do some­thing.”

He added, “As far as the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go is con­cerned, what are we do­ing? We’re eval­u­at­ing all of the Gov­ern­ment ser­vices across every min­istry, di­vi­sion and agency, every­one, look­ing at what it is they do and what is their se­cu­ri­ty pos­ture. We’re com­par­ing that against the in­dus­try stan­dard which they must and should ad­here (to). We’re look­ing at that then based on that, we’ll cre­ate a gap analy­sis and then we will al­so build a roadmap as to how we will get to be com­pli­ant with that. You know what is the prob­lem with that? The goal­post moves every week.”

He said the min­istry had as­sem­bled a team to deal with com­plaints from the pub­lic.

“We’ve cre­at­ed a re­ac­tive force that says if any­thing hap­pens to you, call these peo­ple. They will deal with that... We’re deal­ing with it from an ed­u­ca­tion­al per­spec­tive, we’re deal­ing with it from a sen­si­ti­sa­tion per­spec­tive, we’re deal­ing with it from a gov­ern­ment per­spec­tive in terms of in­cen­tives for peo­ple to do what is re­quired even if they don’t want to. There are ed­u­ca­tion­al pro­grammes in­volved in there. There are a num­ber of mea­sures that have been put in place, not just from this bud­get but from the ones be­fore,” Bac­chus said.

Ac­cord­ing to Bac­chus, there has been a 45 per cent in­crease in ran­somware at­tacks glob­al­ly this year and Trinidad and To­ba­go is not iso­lat­ed from this prob­lem.

How­ev­er, he not­ed that there was a $500,000 al­lo­ca­tion in the 2024 Bud­get to em­ploy skilled peo­ple to help ad­dress dig­i­tal se­cu­ri­ty risks.

The min­is­ter al­so said the Gov­ern­ment is work­ing on leg­is­la­tion that will make things more dif­fi­cult for hack­ers to in­fil­trate cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty spaces.

He not­ed too that var­i­ous min­istries are not at the same lev­el with cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty.

While the min­is­ter did not ze­ro in on any re­cent hacks, he said there is a les­son to be learnt from them.

Bac­chus said, “What I think is hap­pen­ing now is that peo­ple are see­ing the im­pact that this could have, not just at a cor­po­rate lev­el but at a per­son­al lev­el. And I think it has height­ened peo­ple’s aware­ness of it, which I am glad for. But what it al­so al­lows is for the mea­sures that we need to put in place to be put in­to con­text of what is re­quired for your own pro­tec­tion.”

Pressed on the TSTT breach, Bac­chus said he could not and will not speak di­rect­ly to it. How­ev­er, he said his min­istry will get in­volved if re­quired to do so.