Central Bank of The Bahamas Responds to Denial of Service Event on Website

Published: Monday December 17th, 2018

On the morning of December 14th, the Central Bank of The Bahamas experienced a disruption of its website systems that affected the public's ability to access the site. The incident was noted by the Bank's internal Incident Response team within minutes of its first occurrence and protocols established for just this type of intrusion were activated. These procedures were able to fully respond appropriately and the Bank's website was fully restored within hours.

The Bank's website experienced what is known as a "distributed denial of service" (DDoS) attack. In such an event, an extraordinary volume of requests to access the Bank's website would be generated by an outside party (ies), effectively preventing or "denying" the ability of legitimate persons to access the site from their browsers.

It should be noted, we have no indication that the Bank's network or other IT systems were breached. It is also worth noting that the Bank has long instituted an additional layer of security for its information systems, by ensuring that there are no linkages between the website and the Bank's internal network.

The Central Bank remains committed to employing information technology security protocols that either meet or exceed global standard and will continue to respond promptly to security incidences.

17 December 2018