(Eagle News)–The Bureau of Customs is closely working with the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) and the National Privacy Commission (NPC) to determine the persons behind the April data breach.
BOC Assistant Commissioner Philip Maronilla said, so far, they are also now looking into the “human side” of the incident, which means potential hackers might have been able to access their system through the personal social media accounts of their employees who have access to their systems.
He noted that there were several attempts to get into the system of their people through their social media pages.
“So, right now, ang ginawa namin i-total reset of the access of all our people. Gradually, we did that so that it won’t affect our operations para din po ma-secure na ulit iyong buong system natin,” he said.
Maronilla no longer provided additional details, noting the pending investigation of the DICT and the NPC, but he emphasized that the BOC has enough security layers to protect the data privacy of their clients.
He noted that the BOC was now 96.99 percent digitalized, with 161 out of 166 of their processes digital as of the first quarter of 2024, many of which remained unbreachable.
“Now, the few that are yet to be digitalized are those processes that need inter-linkages with other government agencies. So, majority of them, we’re still waiting for the other agencies to upgrade their respective digital systems so that the Bureau of Customs can integrate,” Maronilla said.
On April 8, cybersecurity group Deep Web Konek reported that BOC data was compromised by a cyberhack group that identified themselves as DeathNote Hackers PH, Philippine Hacking University and Excommunicado.
According to Deep Web Konek, compromised were the personal information of over 2,200 employees and about 80,000 customers.
