The Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce is call­ing on com­pa­nies who ex­pe­ri­enced a cy­ber­at­tack to make it their du­ty to in­form af­fect­ed cus­tomers.

The cham­ber made the call yes­ter­day, even as the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of T&T (TSTT) was still prob­ing the Oc­to­ber 9 cy­ber­at­tack that led to a da­ta dump of its in­for­ma­tion on the dark web.

Ini­tial­ly, TSTT had said there was no com­pro­mise of cus­tomer da­ta, al­though it had not cor­rob­o­rat­ed in­for­ma­tion in the pub­lic do­main pur­port­ed to be cus­tomer in­for­ma­tion. Last Fri­day, how­ev­er, it ad­mit­ted that 6GB, or less than one per cent of the petabytes of the com­pa­ny’s da­ta, was ac­cessed.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, the T&T Cham­ber said events of this na­ture are ex­pect­ed to be­come even more com­mon­place and com­pa­nies need to pro­tect them­selves from these at­tacks with the rel­e­vant soft­ware tools.

“It is an un­for­tu­nate re­al­i­ty that this will con­tin­ue to be a part of our dai­ly lives, but firms that ex­pe­ri­ence a breach of se­cu­ri­ty in this man­ner, must be made to in­form those that can be af­fect­ed by such an in­ci­dent by the shar­ing of their da­ta of the pos­si­bil­i­ty of the ex­tend­ed ef­fect,” the busi­ness group ex­plained.

Al­so ad­dress­ing the is­sue, Greater San Fer­nan­do Cham­ber of Com­merce pres­i­dent Ki­ran Singh said the crim­i­nal act had sent se­ri­ous alarm bells through­out the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty.

“What is the re­sult of this breach? A na­tion­wide shad­ow of doubt has now been cast on sav­ing da­ta elec­tron­i­cal­ly, be­cause hack­ers have been able to ac­cess da­ta be­long­ing to in­no­cent per­sons and com­pa­nies on the dark web.

“This is the fright­en­ing re­al­i­ty that we must live with. Very con­fi­den­tial busi­ness in­for­ma­tion may have been com­pro­mised through this ir­re­spon­si­ble act. Banks boast of hy­per se­cu­ri­ty but so did TSTT,” Singh lament­ed.

He said the da­ta breach could not have hap­pened at a worse time in this coun­try’s de­vel­op­ment, as the many pos­i­tive strides made in tran­si­tion­ing to the dig­i­tal age have now been chal­lenged.

He said the cham­ber sup­ports Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les’ call for an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the breach, as it is quite clear laws have been bro­ken.

“Where is the Cy­ber­crime Unit of the TTPS? Un­less im­me­di­ate ac­tion is not tak­en to ap­pre­hend the hack­ers, con­fi­dence may be long in re­turn­ing to the shar­ing of con­fi­den­tial in­for­ma­tion via the in­ter­net.

“We have no idea if this was done lo­cal­ly or if for­eign­ers were in­volved. Busi­ness­peo­ple tend to be very pri­vate and will not vol­un­teer pub­licly to ad­mit if they were per­son­al­ly af­fect­ed,” a con­cerned Singh added.

Ex­press­ing sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments, the Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­bers said the TSTT breach il­lus­trates the dan­ger of be­ing lax with cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty in a rapid­ly evolv­ing busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment that is in­creas­ing its dig­i­tal in­fra­struc­ture.

The CR­BC made a call for the com­pa­ny to no­ti­fy busi­ness­es to let them know they are at risk and al­low them to be vig­i­lant and in­form them how to down­side risks.

“Say­ing less and do­ing less will not help the sit­u­a­tion or mit­i­gate the po­ten­tial risks to in­di­vid­u­als and cor­po­rate and com­mer­cial en­ti­ties go­ing for­ward,” the CR­BC added.

Mean­while, the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of Com­merce said giv­en that TSTT stores in­for­ma­tion from a large per­cent­age of the pub­lic, there ex­ists some un­ease amongst the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty and pri­vate cit­i­zens.

“So far, we do not have any re­ports of this breach from mem­bers of the cham­ber. Based on the in­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed, there ap­pears to be a vi­o­la­tion of cus­tomers’ pri­vate in­for­ma­tion,” it said.

“We are still un­sure of the ex­tent of the leak, as TSTT is still in­ves­ti­gat­ing. How­ev­er, when the full in­ves­ti­ga­tion is com­plete, man­age­ment needs to come clean and ad­vise the pub­lic by pro­vid­ing full dis­clo­sure via the me­dia.”

Fur­ther­more, the cham­ber said the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­ny needs to ad­vise whether they will be in­vest­ing in soft­ware to re­duce fur­ther risk of breach­es of a sim­i­lar na­ture.