ECG lost nearly GH¢500 million due to ransomware attack - Managing Director confirms

Ghana’s power distribution company ECG lost between GH¢400 and GH¢500 million due to a ransomware attack on its systems and operations, according to Managing Director Samuel Dubik Mahama.

Ransomware is a type of malware that holds a victim’s sensitive data or device hostage, threatening to keep it locked unless the victim pays a ransom to the attacker.

Dubik, who described the impact of this attack as severe, shared that it occurred during a critical period when the power distribution company was undergoing a turnaround in its operations which involved system upgrades.

Speaking on the Point of View show on Accra-based Channel One TV, the ECG MD confirmed the Vice President’s earlier remarks made in May this year about the ransomware attack on ECG’s operations and its associated impact.

“Don’t forget that, within those periods, we were going through an operational turnaround, where we were fixing our systems… That was the same year within which we had the ransomware attack thing that we managed to take care of.

“For me, what I will say to that is there’s an investigation going on, so maybe probably, the Vice President is privy to the final investigation report or has some inkling towards whatever is going on there. But I have not been furnished. There was an attack, there’s no two ways about that.

“Looking at a company that has the potential of raising about GH¢50 million to GH¢60 million in a day, if you’re not able to vend for a week, how much have you lost? How are you going to bring yourself back into the game? So yes, we did lose a lot, we had a few good companies consult for us and advise us. And we have a quantity of the amount of money that was lost ranges between GH¢400 million to GH¢500 million within that period,” the ECG Managing Director explained.

Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia in May this year detailed how some officials of the ECG sabotaged the government's revenue generation efforts by installing ransomware into the critical infrastructure of the company's systems.

He stressed that this attack had a severe impact on ECG's revenue operations and prevented the power distribution system from working efficiently during the period.

MA/AE

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