Cyber attack handling ‘staggeringly incompetent’

States’ chief digital and information officer Ge Drossaert said that email accounts were targeted in the attack.

‘This attack was detected, and quick action was taken to successfully prevent any of the risks it posed,’ he said.

‘No data or systems were compromised, and systems are operating as usual today.’

He added that some users had to re-identify themselves before being able to log back on.

‘Due to the security protocols we have in place, we will not be commenting any further.’

States’ Assembly and Constitution Committee president Carl Meerveld said he learned of the breach when he found himself unable to log into his machine.

‘For security reasons all of our passwords had been reset and members had to contact IT support.’

In order to keep in touch, a WhatsApp group was set up by one deputy, but Deputy Meerveld said it was ridiculous that those in charge of IT could not either

text or WhatsApp information to members to keep them informed of what was happening.

‘We signed a very expensive contract with Agilisys to provide our IT support so my first question is “In what way did our IT support fail and could it have been avoided?”.

‘The way it was handled subsequent to the attack appears to be staggeringly incompetent,’ he said.

He had to make a phone call to get another password, but that also gave him cause for concern.

‘They gave me a new password without checking that I really was Carl Meerveld.’

However, Mr Drossaert said that there were processes in place to verify the identify of users contacting the IT help desk.

While Deputy Meerveld’s new password worked, he said he knew of others whose did not.

Another deputy described the process on social media as an utter shambles.

Members who continued to have issues were told to take their laptops along to the weekly IT meeting for States members on Monday.

‘The assumption is that deputies don’t need their computers at weekends and to me that is unbelievable,’ said Deputy Meerveld.