Another govt agency hacked? PSA looks into possible data breach

The Philippine Statistics Authority said it is investigating a possible data breach that affected its systems.

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PhilSys, Civil Registration secure

The PSA said in a statement that following a report on October 7 regarding an alleged data leak, it immediately activated its Data Breach Response Team (DBRT) and launched an investigation.

Based on its initial assessment, PSA said the affected system was limited to the Community-Based Monitoring System (CBMS). It is still checking what personal data may have been compromised.

The PSA has coordinated with the Compliance and Monitoring Division of the National Privacy Commission (NPC), the National Computer Emergency Response Team-Philippines (NCERT-PH) of the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT), and the Anti-Cybercrime Group of the Philippine National Police (PNP) in relation to this matter, it said.

Additional preventive and containment measures were also implemented to ensure the security of all systems and databases that is manages, including shutting down and isolating the system known to have been affected, PSA added.

It assured the public that the Philippine Identification System (PhilSys) and the Civil Registration System (CRS) were not affected.

The PSA warns the public that social media posts with the alleged sample data include links that contain malware that may be used by cybercriminals and bad actors to perpetuate other illicit acts. Therefore, the public is strongly advised not to click on such links, it said.

PSA said it will work with authorities to go after the perpetrators.

Prior to this, a ransomware attack affected the systems of PhilHealth. Authorities said hackers have begun exposing data they collected from the state insurer after it failed to pay the ransom money.

PhilHealth has maintained that the member database is secure.

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Source: PSA