Hardware, not cyberattack, behind govt systems issue – minister

Outdated government hardware, not a cybersecurity breach, was to blame for a recent disruption of government systems, according to Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Technology Senator Jonathan Reid. He said the affected equipment had “gone beyond the stage of its shelf life” and has since been replaced following a detailed audit of key digital infrastructure across ministries.

Addressing public concern following the circulation of an audio related to government systems, Reid explained that the issue involving the Barbados Licensing Authority was purely technological.

He told reporters: “The Licensing Authority issue wasn’t a cybersecurity threat; it was a technological problem. Quite frankly, it’s a hardware problem that went beyond the stage of its shelf life. It became obsolete.”

“As a result of obsolescence, there were some failures in some core components, and that has been rectified. That’s the reality of the world that we live in — you have physical environments that need to be maintained, and you have digital environments that need to be maintained as well.”

Reid revealed that in December, the ministry conducted a comprehensive audit of critical digital infrastructure across government ministries, with findings expected to be presented shortly.

“We actually, in December, did a pretty detailed audit of a lot of the critical digital infrastructure around government ministries, and we have a full presentation coming very shortly outlining where specific investments need to be made,” he said.

The minister acknowledged that Barbados has historically underinvested in both its digital infrastructure and the development of digital skills.

“I’m on record as saying that we have underinvested over a long period of time in our physical digital infrastructure,” Reid said. “But we have also, as a country, not invested in developing the skills that we require to be a highly competitive country. We are well on the way to doing that, but there is a lot more to be done.”

When asked whether similar audits were conducted at other government agencies, Reid confirmed that the December exercise involved a deep dive into critical infrastructure across several entities.

“There was a pretty detailed audit that we did over the month of December,” he said. “The reality is that during the year, audits do take place, but this was a specific deep dive into critical infrastructure.”

He noted that some systems are in urgent need of upgrades, but funding remains a challenge amid competing national priorities.

“Things do have a shelf life. Things do have to be invested into, and these things require money. Obviously, we are competing with other important components of running the country,” Reid said, adding that his ministry would be making a strong case to the prime minister and the Ministry of Finance.

“Our ministry is going to make a pretty strong case as to why it’s critically important to advance our digital infrastructure.”

The government has received strong support so far, he said, but stressed the importance of expanding technical capacity and expertise.

“The intent for us is to build a strong sovereign capacity around our digital infrastructure — advancing our compute capacity, our data centre capacity, and our cybersecurity capacity,” he said. “We invested a lot of time and effort into that last year, and I think we were stronger last year than we were before.”

He also underscored the scale of investment required, particularly in data centres.

“My role as minister of technology is to make a compelling argument that it’s not a cost… it’s an investment,” Reid said. “Data centres are expensive. You’re talking about almost US$10 million [$20m] per megawatt. These are massive levels of investment, and the more digital services we bring online, the more physical capacity we are going to need.”

Reid was speaking to reporters as the Ministry of Educational Transformation launched a science and technology roadshow at Grantley Adams Memorial Secondary School.