Office of the Registrar General hit by cyber attack

 

The Office of the Registrar General (ORG), formerly Registrar General's Department, has been hit by a cyber attack, which it says was an attempt to disrupt systems and gain access to personal data.

 

The attack has prompted a full-scale investigation and is being attributed to a cyber criminal group that has been targeting several Jamaican companies.

 

Speaking with Radio Jamaica News on Wednesday afternoon, consultant and cyber security expert Richard Weir said on Sunday, August 24, the ORG's system started to go offline.

 

"Specifically, the infrastructure with the line of business applications, such as the applications tracking system... that's the one that generates the certificates. We immediately launched our investigation and we went in containment mode. So we wanted to ensure that it didn't impact any other system because it appeared that it was confined to a particular area of our network, one of our segments, impacting the infrastructure supporting those systems. We don't have any evidence right now of direct interaction with the systems themselves, just the underlying infrastructure," he noted.

 

Mr. Weir said the agency swiftly engaged its response mechanism, went into containment and disabled certain services to mitigate fallout from the external attacks.

 

He further explained that similar attacks have been concentrated across companies that handle personal data as well as health services globally.

 

But he said for security purposes, the name of this cyber criminal group will not be made public given the potential implications.

 

"We won't put that out there for anybody to be able to follow these guys. I can say at this point, we've identified one of the groups that has been active in Jamaica over the last year or so. So I've had displeasure of coming up on this particular group in other companies locally, not just Jamaica alone, but targeting certain types of entities globally," he explained, adding that these entities usually have health-related data.

 

The ORG is Jamaica's sole repository of birth, death, marriage and faetal death records.

 

The agencies, as most of the critical services have been restored. However, it is cautiously and strategically phasing in its remaining operations that were taken offline. 

 

Meanwhile, the National Identification and Registration Authority, under which the ORG falls, says its cyber security systems remain robust and secure.

 

It is assuring citizens and stakeholders that their data is secure and that the integrity of the National Identification System remains uncompromised.