Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

In­ter­na­tion­al ex­perts have as­sist­ed the Gov­ern­ment in deal­ing with the re­cent cy­ber at­tack at the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s Min­istry. And now, the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry is urg­ing all or­gan­i­sa­tions to take the nec­es­sary pre­cau­tions to mit­i­gate against ris­ing ran­somware at­tacks in T&T.

This was point­ed out yes­ter­day by gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials af­ter UNC MP Sad­dam Ho­sein de­mand­ed At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour speak on the cy­ber at­tack on the AG’s of­fice net­work which was re­vealed last week.

Ho­sein de­plored the lack of in­for­ma­tion on the mat­ter. He ques­tioned the safe­ty of sen­si­tive in­for­ma­tion at the So­lic­i­tor Gen­er­al’s of­fice, An­ti Ter­ror­ism Unit, and Com­pa­nies Reg­istry and if the So­lic­i­tor Gen­er­al at­tor­neys would have in­for­ma­tion to go to court to­day. Ho­sein not­ed the State al­ready had to pay $800,000 to re­tired judges Stan­ley John and Rol­ston Nel­son to in­ves­ti­gate the miss­ing file con­cern­ing the claim by nine for­mer mur­der ac­cused ear­li­er this year.

Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion Min­is­ter Has­sel Bac­chus and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds did not re­ply to queries by Guardian Me­dia. But Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials as­sured that the cy­ber at­tack has re­ceived the at­ten­tion of lo­cal se­cu­ri­ty as well as in­ter­na­tion­al ex­perts.

The Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry in a state­ment yes­ter­day stat­ed that its T&T Cy­ber Se­cu­ri­ty In­ci­dent Re­sponse Team (TT-CSIRT) has urged all or­gan­i­sa­tions to take the nec­es­sary pre­cau­tions to mit­i­gate against ris­ing ran­somware at­tacks in this coun­try.

The min­istry stat­ed that TT-CSIRT pro­vides dif­fer­ent tiers of in­ci­dent re­sponse de­pend­ing on the need of the or­gan­i­sa­tion:

• Con­sul­ta­tive–giv­ing ad­vice and guid­ance to the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s in­ci­dent re­sponse team (IRT)

• In­ci­dent Han­dling – co­or­di­nates the in­ci­dent re­sponse process and ad­vis­es the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s In­ci­dent Re­sponse Team

• In­ci­dent Man­age­ment–co­or­di­nates the in­ci­dent re­sponse process, leads the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s IRT and de­ploy­ment of TT-CSIRT’s tech­ni­cal per­son­nel and re­sources to re­solve the in­ci­dent

The min­istry stat­ed that in­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed to the TT-CSIRT will be held se­cure­ly and in the strictest con­fi­dence.

“In­for­ma­tion will not be dis­closed with­out the con­sent of the client or­gan­i­sa­tion. Any in­for­ma­tion held will be anonymized and de­pict­ed on­ly in ag­gre­gat­ed sta­tis­tics,” the min­istry added.

Fur­ther, the min­istry stat­ed that the fol­low­ing re­sources de­tail the nec­es­sary ac­tions that must be tak­en to hard­en or­gan­i­sa­tions:

• Ran­somware Pre­ven­tion Guide: https://ttc­sirt.gov.tt/ran­somware-pre­ven­tion/

• Ran­somware Re­sponse Check­list: https://ttc­sirt.gov.tt/ran­somware-re­sponse-check­list/

If an or­gan­i­sa­tion falls vic­tim to a ran­somware at­tack, the min­istry ad­vised that con­tact b made with TT-CSIRT im­me­di­ate­ly via:

• On­line Form: https://ttc­sirt.gov.tt/re­port-an-in­ci­dent/

• Email: con­tacts@ttc­sirt.gov.tt

Mean­while, of­fi­cials at the AG Min­istry re­it­er­at­ed that court doc­u­ments served elec­tron­i­cal­ly from June 30 to Ju­ly 7 have not been re­ceived and can be for­ward­ed to so­lic­i­tor­gen­er­al@gov.tt, sgser­vice@gov.tt, chiefgstate­fil­ing@gov.tt, and dpp@gov.tt,”

Or: there is phys­i­cal ser­vice via the des­ig­nat­ed of­fi­cers at the Of­fice of the So­lic­i­tor Gen­er­al at Tow­er C, Lev­els 17-18, 1A Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain, the DPP’s of­fice at Win­sure Build­ing, 24-28 Rich­mond Street, PoS, Gulf City Mall, Lev­el 7, San Fer­nan­do and Gulf City Mall, Low­lands, To­ba­go.

UNC MPs at­tend PGA work­shop on cy­ber crime

Leader of Op­po­si­tion Sen­ate Busi­ness Sen­a­tor Wade Mark led a del­e­ga­tion of UNC MPs at a two-day work­shop on cy­ber crime at the Radis­son Ho­tel last week.

The work­shop, or­gan­ised by the Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans for Glob­al Ac­tion (PGA) In­ter­na­tion­al Peace and Se­cu­ri­ty Pro­gram, fo­cused on en­gag­ing Caribbean par­lia­men­tar­i­ans in the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Bu­dapest Con­ven­tion on cy­ber crime. Dis­cus­sions al­so ex­plored the dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed im­pact of cy­ber in­ci­dents based on gen­der as well as up­dates on the PGA’s cam­paign to pro­mote nu­clear and ra­di­o­log­i­cal se­cu­ri­ty.

The UNC stat­ed, “As our day-to-day lives be­come in­creas­ing­ly in­te­grat­ed with tech­nol­o­gy, the UNC will con­tin­ue to push for greater ed­u­ca­tion and pub­lic aware­ness of the threats posed by cy­ber­crim­i­nals as well as ad­vo­cate for poli­cies that keep cit­i­zens safe from all as­pects of crime in­clud­ing those com­mit­ted in cy­ber­space.”