Authorities are working to repair and assess the damage to the government’s servers, after a water leak in a room housing central state servers, the Deputy Ministry of Research, Innovation and Digital Policy said on Tuesday afternoon.
Meanwhile, an investigation has been ordered into why the equipment was not moved to CYTA premises as decided by the Council of Ministers in November 2022, the Deputy Ministry noted.
The leak, discovered in the basement of the Finance Ministry on Monday afternoon, also knocked out the state telephone network, but that was back up on Tuesday morning, officials said.
“For security reasons servers were shut down to limit and restore any damage,” the Cypriot finance ministry said in a tweet.
Therefore the websites of the Ministry of Finance, including the websites of the Department of Taxation and the Department of Customs, of Social Security, of Migration Registry, of Land Registry and the companies’ registrar as well as e-mail accounts, are not working and there is no accurate estimate as to when the connection will be restored.
Visitors to state offices on Tuesday were told services were limited.
The government servers were in a finance ministry basement, a level below a floor holding a water tank which overflowed.
November 2022 decision to relocate the servers not implemented
In its statement, the Deputy Ministry also noted that despite a decision by the Council of Ministers in November 2022 to move the state’s servers to the CYTA facilities, the systems were placed in the Ministry of Finance in a way that exposed them to a possible accident.
An investigation will be carried out into the reasons why the decision was not implemented and why no further measures were taken for the protection of the equipment, the Deputy Ministry said.
Authorities have had a string of digital misfortunes this year. Last month the island’s land registry department was knocked offline by hackers, and some days ago the country’s Open University was also targeted.
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Government websites down due to water leakage in server room