Data leak due to lack of skilled people, technical flaws

The leakage of personal information of people from the Office of the Registrar General, Birth & Death Registration happened due to lack of skilled people and technical flaws. This came up in the investigation report submitted by the probe committee of the ICT Division.

An investigation committee, headed by the Digital Security Agency director general, was formed over the incident of data leak on 10 July. The committee was asked to submit the report within seven working days.

The investigation report was submitted to the ICT Division on Thursday. Speaking to Prothom Alo, Digital Security Agency director general Abu Sayeed Md Kamruzzaman said, “The investigation report was submitted in time. The ICT Division will provide details in this regard.”

According to the sources in the ICT Division, “The information of ‘millions’ of people became open to all due to technical flaws. Although the agency deals with sensitive information, it doesn't have adequate manpower. They only had one programmer. And the rest were appointed on an ad-hoc basis if and when needed. Apart from that, the company which developed the software didn’t hand it over properly.”

Earlier, state minister for information and technology Zunaid Ahmed told the newspersons that the incident occurred due to technical flaws.

US online media platform TechCrunch, in a report on 7 July said information of millions of Bangladeshis had been leaked through a government website. However, it didn’t reveal the name of the website due to security reasons.

Later, they revealed that it was the Office of the Registrar General, Birth & Death Registration.