Apenisa Waqairadovu 
The Suva City Council has revealed a recent cyber-security attack on its system that caused an outage.
FBC News had been following up on the matter, and this afternoon the SCC says that the hacking was by external parties withholding all of the internal data and demanding a ransom for its release.
SCC Acting Chief Executive Tevita Boseiwaqa says the Council acted swiftly to address the situation before assembling a cyber-team comprised of the Ministry of Communications Department of Information Technology & Computer Services staff, Fiji Police Force Cyber Unit, VT Solutions, Cyber Pacific, and the SCC IT team.
Boseiwaqa says the team has been working diligently to restore the system and also enhance its security measures against future cyberattacks.
He says they have now restored all financial systems and payroll from the day of the attack, and the team is still working to recover the rest of the data that was encrypted with the help of an external vendor, allowing the Council to resume operations.
He adds that the SCC IT team is actively working towards regaining our full operational capacity, which is positive news.
Boseiwaqa says over the past few weeks, the staff have worked diligently to maintain optimal service delivery, manually entering data into the server as needed.
The acting CEO also issued an apology for the delays experienced during this time.
He says the Council is urging everyone to continue cooperating with us as we work to fully restore the security and functionality of our operations.
The acting CEO has also reassured the public of the council’s dedication to preventing future breaches.
