The ma­jor cy­ber­at­tack at the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go shot back in­to pub­lic scruti­ny again this week, af­ter cur­rent act­ing CEO Kent West­ern told a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee his pre­de­ces­sor, Lisa Agard, was re­spon­si­ble for pro­vid­ing Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les with mis­lead­ing in­for­ma­tion on the mat­ter.

Dur­ing a con­tri­bu­tion to the Par­lia­ment on No­vem­ber 1, Min­is­ter Gon­za­les claimed there was no com­pro­mise of cus­tomers’ da­ta dur­ing an at­tack by Ran­somXXX. This proved to be in­ac­cu­rate and days lat­er, both TSTT and Gon­za­les back­tracked and re­vealed the truth. So, con­trary to what the min­is­ter said, and what TSTT clear­ly ini­tial­ly sought to hide, the cy­ber­at­tack­ers man­aged to ex­tract con­fi­den­tial in­for­ma­tion for thou­sands of cus­tomers, among them high pro­filed cit­i­zens such as the Prime Min­is­ter and Pres­i­dent, and leaked it to the Dark Web.

This was a sit­u­a­tion Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley la­belled a na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty con­cern.

How­ev­er, that Ms Agard has since chal­lenged the min­is­ter’s ac­count of the in­for­ma­tion she pro­vid­ed him, while he has main­tained what he told par­lia­men­tary col­leagues was “the in­con­tro­vert­ible truth,” leaves cit­i­zens in a quandary we be­lieve on­ly the min­is­ter can ad­dress.

To be clear, dur­ing an apol­o­gy on the is­sue in the House last Fri­day, Min­is­ter Gon­za­les de­nied de­lib­er­ate­ly mis­lead­ing the House, say­ing, “Madam Speak­er, the state­ment in ques­tion which I made to the Ho­n­ourable House on 1 No­vem­ber, 2023, was at all times based on: 1) In­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed to me by the ex­ec­u­tive and/or the board of TSTT; 2) TSTT’s cor­re­spon­dence to its cus­tomers dat­ed 29th Oc­to­ber, 2023; and 3) TSTT’s state­ment on (the) cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty is­sue, (da­ted) Oc­to­ber 30, 2023.”

Now that Ms Agard, who could have fall­en in ei­ther of the two cat­e­gories list­ed by the min­is­ter, has de­nied she gave the in­ac­cu­rate in­for­ma­tion to Min­is­ter Gon­za­les, the ques­tion re­mains who did it? This is now es­pe­cial­ly crit­i­cal since the oth­er mem­bers of the TSTT ex­ec­u­tive/board, who would have giv­en the min­is­ter in­for­ma­tion, are now al­so im­pli­cat­ed in this un­fold­ing fi­as­co.

It is with­out doubt that TSTT’s han­dling of the mat­ter was noth­ing short of un­eth­i­cal and un­pro­fes­sion­al, es­pe­cial­ly to its cus­tomers, who were kept in the dark for al­most an en­tire month be­fore me­dia re­ports of the at­tack forced a com­pa­ny re­sponse. That it at­tempt­ed to clev­er­ly shroud as­pects of in­for­ma­tion in its ini­tial state­ment, on­ly alert­ed to the fact that the at­tack was far more grave than it ini­tial­ly let on.

This was what ul­ti­mate­ly led to Min­is­ter Gon­za­les’ er­ro­neous state­ment in the House and Ms Agard’s fir­ing. It is al­so not lost on us that Ms Agard is now fi­nal­ly con­firm­ing she was not giv­en a chance to make a de­fence of her­self. So if Ms Agard was sent pack­ing for such a griev­ous in­dis­cre­tion, why are the oth­er in­di­vid­u­als in­volved still with­in the or­gan­i­sa­tion?

More im­por­tant­ly, Min­is­ter Gon­za­les must clear the air on the mat­ter, since it means he still has not giv­en the pub­lic full dis­clo­sure on ex­act­ly what tran­spired. The pub­lic de­serves noth­ing less.

Fail­ing this, Agard, who has no le­gal re­course be­cause the TSTT ex­ec­u­tives who ap­peared be­fore the JSC have im­mu­ni­ty against such ac­tion, should be al­lowed to ap­pear be­fore the same com­mit­tee to set the record straight once and for all.