By Sue-Ann Wayow
A MALWARE incursion was the reason why the Telecommunication Services of Trinidad and Tobago (TSTT) encountered problems to its system in March.
And all efforts are being made to reduce the risks of cyberattacks.
This was stated by Minister of Public Utilities Marvin Gonzales in Parliament on Friday in answering questions asked by the Opposition.
He said that on March 13, TSTT was the target of a malware incursion.
Gonzales said, “TSTT’s system detected a security attack directed at a number of the Company’s internal only solutions and applications. As a precautionary measure , all possibly impacted systems were isolated, including TSTT’s online payment application from TSTT’s website stored within the private Cloud environment.”
As a result, TSTT was unable to process payment via that platform up until March 28. Other payment methods were utilised and TSTT had assured that no one would have been disconnected during that period due to non-payment of bills.
Gonzales said, “ TSTT undertook a series of immediate environmental protection steps as follows: the software master records of the infected machines were destroyed completely removing these systems from TSTT’s environment, the cloud host servers were rebuilt following the manufacturer’s best practice to secure, enhance security features and reduce risk.”
He was also asked about the losses incurred by TSTT during that period to which he responded, he did not have that information at hand.
Gonzales further said that malware incursions were normal occurrences at such organisations and systems were monitored closely.
