Local bank outage not related to data breach
An outage of service at Cayman National Bank over the weekend coincided with a major data breach at the bank’s sister company in the Isle of Man, but local CNB officials say the two incidents are unrelated and Cayman Islands customers should not be affected by the overseas event.
Bank spokesperson Shari Welcome said CNB had planned for services to be offline from 1am to 3:30pm Sunday to install a major upgrade in its software.
“It was a routine upgrade for our card system,” Welcome said.
A notice on the outage was published a week before, she added.
“All of our merchants were advised,” she said. “We provided them with a workaround.”
However, there were reports of confusion and frustrated customers across Grand Cayman on Sunday. There were even reports of problems on Saturday, prior to the scheduled outing.
An employee working the desk at Ocean Frontiers said, after checking the company’s email records, the East End dive shop did not appear to have been notified and employees were surprised by the outage.
The system was back up and running by late afternoon.
The bank said forensic specialists are looking into the hacking incident in the Isle of Man, for which responsibility has been claimed by an internationally known hacker. Officials here believe the data breach is limited to the sister company.
“The operations in the Cayman Islands do not share common systems, databases, client information, or email platforms with those in Isle of Man,” the company said in a news release. “[Cayman National Corporation] is confident that the hack is contained within the Isle of Man operations only, and does not affect [Cayman National Bank] or any other business in the Cayman Islands.”
“It was a routine upgrade for our card system,” Welcome said.
A notice on the outage was published a week before, she added.
“All of our merchants were advised,” she said. “We provided them with a workaround.”
However, there were reports of confusion and frustrated customers across Grand Cayman on Sunday. There were even reports of problems on Saturday, prior to the scheduled outing.
An employee working the desk at Ocean Frontiers said, after checking the company’s email records, the East End dive shop did not appear to have been notified and employees were surprised by the outage.
The system was back up and running by late afternoon.
The bank said forensic specialists are looking into the hacking incident in the Isle of Man, for which responsibility has been claimed by an internationally known hacker. Officials here believe the data breach is limited to the sister company.
“The operations in the Cayman Islands do not share common systems, databases, client information, or email platforms with those in Isle of Man,” the company said in a news release. “[Cayman National Corporation] is confident that the hack is contained within the Isle of Man operations only, and does not affect [Cayman National Bank] or any other business in the Cayman Islands.”
