Haryana discom billing faces cyber attack

Billing accounts of thousands of electricity consumers in Haryana have been hacked in a cyber attack, a state discom official said on Wednesday.

"There was a cyber attack on March 21 on the Automatic Meter Reading System (AMR) through which the billing of about 4,000 Industrial consumers is being done. The said system was installed, operated and managed by Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) since 2011," said a spokesperson of the Uttar Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam (UHBVN).

He said that there was no loss of billing data as the backup is already available with the Nigam and the billing of these consumers is also not affected.

"There is no business loss and there is continuity in the business. Immediately after the attack, the complete system study was carried out by the concerned officers, cyber experts as well as other IT experts. The database was found encrypted and the backup of encrypted database was also taken for further retrieval," he said.

A FIR has been lodged by UHBVN officers.

"The Nigam had already taken steps much before to phase out the said system and to be replaced by latest, robust and technologically advanced system on cloud services which shall be operational by the end of May 2018. The billing of above 4,000 consumers has already started functioning normally," the spokesperson added.

--IANS

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