Bijli Sahuliyat to remain unavailable for unspecified period
Mohinder Verma
JAMMU, June 28: Power Development Department of Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir is facing the risk of losing data of lakhs of consumers in view of cyber attack at its main centre in Srinagar few days back. Due to this, Bijli Sahuliyat Application and other online services will remain unavailable for unspecified period although Nodal Officer has been authorized by the Government to engage cyber experts for screening of servers.
The hacking of the Power Development Department’s Data Centre located at Bemina took place in the wee hours of June 24, 2020 following which four servers out of total 55 located in Kashmir valley started behaving abnormally.
Acting swiftly, the officer incharge of the Data Centre immediately isolated the infected servers in order to protect the data in other servers. However, none of the officers in the Data Centre is in a position to specify whether other servers have suffered damages or not due to the cyber attack.
Due to the closure of all the servers, the website of the Power Development Department and its Bijli Sahuliyat Application have been rendered defunct. “In addition to billing, we are unable to provide connections via online mode as the web platforms are down”, a senior officer of the department said when contacted, adding “we cannot go online till we are sure that there is no malware in our system”.
It is pertinent to mention here that data of around 5 lakh power consumers covered under Restructured Accelerated Power Development and Reforms Programme (R-APDRP) is only stored in the Data Centre at Srinagar while as the same of remaining 15 lakh consumers is available both with the Data Centre as well as local authorities of the Systems and Operations Wing as such risk of losing data of all the consumers is involved.
“The bills for the last month have already been generated and dispatched to large number of consumers and they can make the payment through the Jammu and Kashmir Bank but this service is not available online”, official sources said, adding “unless the Data Centre is made functional after screening of infected servers all the online services including generation of fresh bills will remain suspended”.
When contacted, Chief Engineer Power Development Department Kashmir Aijaz Ahmed Dar, who is Nodal Officer for Data Centre, said, “we can operate non-infected servers but this step will lead to spread of bug as such entire Data Centre will remain non-functional till proper screening is conducted by the cyber experts”.
In response to a question, he said, “Government has authorized the department to engage top cyber experts of the country and exercise in this regard is going on. The cyber experts may take 7 to 10 days to complete the screening process and thereafter we will start operating servers one by one”.
The Chief Engineer, however, failed to give any specific time-frame for the restoration of the functioning of the Data Centre. “Actually, we don’t know how much damage the cyber attack has caused to the servers”, he said and admitted that generation of fresh bills of the consumers will take time.
The Bijli Sahuliyat Application of the Power Development Department offers services like payment of bill, submission of applications for shifting of connection and change of consumer details etc.
Due to cyber attack, large number of power consumers are worried about payment of bills made through Bijli Sahuliyat in the recent past. “We made payment through Bijli Sahuliyat but the same was not reflected in the bills delivered to us few days back”, they said and hoped that Power Development Department will sort out this issue while issuing fresh bills.
Though several days have lapsed since the Data Centre of the PDD was hacked yet the cyber attacker has not been identified till date.
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