The Tribune

By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

ARAWAK Homes' chairman, Franklyn Wilson, yesterday urged Bahamian businesses to closely at monitor controls on their computer systems, telling Tribune Business his operations had been "severely disrupted"after a former employee allegedly took control of his companies' domain names and employee e-mail accounts.

Sunshine Holdings has secured an order from Chief Justice Sir Michael Barnett for the return of the domain names associated with Mr Wilson's businesses, Sunshine Holdings, Sunshine Finance and Arawak Homes, as well as employee e-mail accounts.

Sir Michael has ordered that the defendant, Paul Shaw, be restrained until June 13 from "assigning, using, transferring or otherwise interfering with the domain names, and e-mail accounts associated with the domain name,s of Mr Wilson's companies.

Mr Wilson told Tribune Business that the issue had compromised the privacy of employee business correspondences.

He said: "This has been very disruptive to our business over the last three days. We were trying to figure out what was going on. We don't know the full consequence as yet. It takes a while for these things to play out.

"I encourage all business people to look very carefully at their computer systems, and to know how tight their controls are over their computer systems. This could happen to anybody, and many businesses don't pay too much attention to these things. It's been very disruptive to our business and has taken a lot of senior management time. It's going to take time and money to get all of our websites back up and running again."

Kyron Strachan, a director of Sunshine Finance and Arawak Homes, alleged in an affidavit that Mr Shaw had been employed as manager of computer information systems, and was responsible for computer networks, domain names and e-mail accounts for Sunshine Holdings from September 10, 2000, until his resignation on May 18, 2012.

During his employment, Mr Shaw was instructed to secure the domain names and e-mail network relative to Mr Wilson's companies.

On June 2, Mr Strachan alleged that the Sunshine group experienced technical difficulties with its computer networks, and e-mails were not being received by their intended recipients.

He claimed it was then discovered that the domain names had been transferred to an unknown entity seeking to "unlawfully sell and/or transfer" the plaintiff's domain names.

Mr Strachan alleged that it was subsequently discovered that the registered agent for the Sunshine domain names was Mr Shaw, who had failed to deliver the passwords, codes and other documents associated with its ownership of the domain names upon his resignation.