The Tribune

By KEILE CAMPBELL

Tribune Staff Reporter

kcampbell@tribunemedia.net

BAHAMAS Chamber of Commerce and Employers’ Confederation (BCCEC) President Leo Rolle said he hopes businesses are not penalised after Friday’s global technology outage.

He said BCCEC members have expressed concerns after the Department of Inland Revenue’s online payment portal went down.

“Just as our members now have to revert and use some type of mechanism, we’re wondering and hoping now what the Department of Inland Revenue’s contingency is in these instances where businesses are in [risk of] being penalised because of the fact that they’re unable to make their payments,” he said.

“I can’t really say whether there will be a recourse or there won’t. I haven’t seen anything relative to a contingency plan or any type of disaster management or crisis management measures being put in place by any of the ministries, but I’m certain there are protocols, and they will be released probably this week.”

The outage affected several industries. Some banks reported ATMs were out of service, systems at the Lynden Pindling International Airport (LPIA) were disrupted, and some businesses and vendors were unable to process transactions.

Central Bank governor John Rolle noted some payment services went offline.

BCCEC CEO Mr Rolle said the chamber advised businesses to revert to manual receipts and transactions and avoid doing card transactions during the outage.

The outage happened after cybersecurity company CrowdStrike distributed a faulty update to its security software.

Mr Rolle said education can counter technophobia after the outage.