The Tribune

By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

A Cabinet minister yesterday said efforts are being made to better equip the Royal Bahamas Police Force (RBPF) to tackle cyber crime.

Speaking ahead of a Cabinet meeting, Marvin Dames, minister of national security, said Monday’s ransomware attack on the Bahamas Broadcasting Corporation (BCB) illustrated the emerging technology-related threats that Bahamian authorities now have to tackle.

Mr Dames said: “This is the world that we are living in today. This is certainly the first of its kind that would have been reported here in The Bahamas, where we would have had the servers of ZNS hacked with ransomware. This is common occurrence around the world now.”

He added: “The police are currently investigating this particular incident. This is something that in our planning we have certainly been anticipating. As an organisation we are working assiduously to equip the police force for these type of of modern day challenges.

“I think last year it was estimated that ransomware alone as a form of cybercrime, its global cost was somewhere in the area of $5bn. This is not something uncommon around the world. We are currently working with our international partners to determine how we address this particular issue as it relates to ZNS. The police are on top of it. We just have to see where it ends up”.

ZNS chairman, Mike Smith, previously confirmed that the organisation’s servers were hit some time before noon on Monday. He did not disclose the amount of the ransom demanded by the hackers, but said they were based abroad.

“Our servers have been hacked,” Mr Smith said, “and we’ve brought in the police and IT advisors and other people to seek to assist us, but we have a very serious problem where people are seeking to get a ransom.

“All the servers are down, so everything you do with a computer you cannot do. We have some real veterans here so everything is being done pretty much manually as much as we could. We have a lot of people advising us as to how we should move forward.”