~ Company had no cybersecurity insurance in place.~
PHILIPSBURG:--- Minister of VROMI Egbert Jurendy Doran confirmed on Wednesday that there is no fixed date as to when government-owned company NV GEBE will reopen its doors since the company servers were hacked on March 17th, 2002.
Almost two months since the hacking Doran said no one is held responsible for not securing the company’s data and servers since the investigation is still ongoing. The Minister was quizzed on the situation of the government-owned company by various reporters. He also confirmed that NV GEBE did not have cybersecurity insurance in place. The Minister said that while discussing the situation with NV GEBE and the Council of Ministers it was disclosed that cybersecurity insurances are rare in St. Maarten but the government plans to look into having such insurances in place as they beef their data security.
The Minister declined to say whether or not the company’s servers were backed up citing that it is delicate information that they do not want in the public domain. “The hack is still live and direct and so I will not divulge internal information such as if the servers were backed up, since I came IT background.”
Doran also indicated that the ransom that was demanded by the hackers was not paid.
Appointment of the management team.
Asked for an update on the appointment of the management team, the minister said negotiations with the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and the Chief Operations Officer (COO) is still ongoing while the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) is undergoing screening. A process he said started almost two months ago. Doran promised to have a definite answer next week on the appointment of the candidates. He said selected candidates do have the right to negotiate but the government does have a cut-off point. He said just last week the chairman of the Supervisory Board of Directors on the negotiation which he said was still ongoing.
It should be noted that the current Temporary Manager Merril Temmer was appointed head of the IT department in 1993. Temmer is the COO candidate who is busy negotiating his contract while the company is in jeopardy for not having adequate IT security prior to it being hacked by blackbyte ransomware.
