NIBTT offices temporarily closed for next three days

Trinidad and Tobago: The national insurance board of Trinidad and Tobago (NIBTT) releases a public notice for the temporary closure of NIBTT offices for three days that is from December 27 to 29, 2023 (Wednesday to Friday).

The closure has been announced in concern with a cyber attack which occurred on December 26, 2023 (Tuesday). The board is assessing the system and reporting the issues experienced as ransomware attacks.

Considerably, all the data monitoring steps are being taken as part of the protection of data integrity and technology hardware. Even external help is being taken to resolve the matters. The board’s diligent work has given the projections for the successful completion of the issue.

The national insurance boards of Trinidad and Tobago is even working with external technology partners to get efficient solutions for the concerned matter. Also, the board has reported the incident to the Trinidad and Tobago Cyber Security Incident Response Team (TT-CSIRT) under the Ministry of National Security.

Shifting the focus towards the laws to deal with cyber crime for national security, it has been reported that there are no laws to deal with such crimes and this directly questions the cyber security of the region.

Over the five years, more than 200 cases of cyber attacks have come forward, and no legislation to date has succeeded in defining the incidents as crimes, as stated by the members of the National Security Ministry’s Cyber Security Incident Response team.

Even the manager of TT- CSIRT, Angus Smith stated that approximately 85% of the cyber incidents which have happened at the place reported incidents to the team. Even the groups from foreign teams have encountered the same.

However, due to no legislation on this, the injustice remained in the way because the dependency of the team on the laws to act against criminals leads to the failure in dealing with such issues.