SCC hit by serious cybersecurity breach – FBC News

Suva City Council has reported a recent cyber attack on its systems which caused an outage.

FBC News investigated the matter and this afternoon SCC reported that the breach was initiated by external parties who withheld the release of all internal data and demanded a ransom for its release.

Acting SCC Chief Executive Officer Tevita Boseiwaqa said the Council acted swiftly to address the situation before a cybersecurity team was formed, comprising personnel from the Department of Information Technology and Computer Services, Ministry of Communications, Fiji Police Cyber ​​Security Unit, VT Solutions, Cyber ​​Pacific and the SCC IT team.

Boseiwaqa said the team was working hard to get the system back up and running and improving its security measures to prevent future cyberattacks.

He says they have now restored all of the financial and payroll systems to pre-attack levels, and the team is still working to recover the rest of the data that was encrypted using a third-party vendor, which will allow the council to resume operations.

He adds that the SCC IT team is actively working to get us back to full operational capacity, which is good news.

Boseiwaqa says that over the past few weeks, employees have been working hard to maintain optimal service quality, manually entering data into the server when necessary.

The Acting Director General also apologised for the delays that occurred during this time.

He added that the Council appeals to everyone to continue to cooperate with us as we strive to fully restore the security and functionality of our operations.

The Acting Director General also assured the public of the council’s commitment to preventing future violations.