KE briefly suspends non-critical services after cyberattack

The utility firm supplies power to around 2.5m households, industries, commercial and agricultural consumers

KARACHI:

The K-Electric (KE) – which has faced severe criticism and penalty for prolonged power outages and electrocutions – has come under a cyberattack which compelled the firm to temporarily suspend some of the non-critical services to end consumers.

"K-Electric experienced an attempted cyber incident earlier this week," the only integrated power utility firm in the private sector reported on Wednesday.

The utility firm supplies power to around 2.5 million households, industries, commercial and agricultural consumers in Karachi and parts of upper Sindh and Balochistan.

It, however, remained unknown whether KE lost its consumers’ data and bore any financial loss in the attack.

The company did not share the details regarding what was likely the objective and origin (country) of the attack.

"The KE teams have initiated consultation with international information security experts and are also collaborating with local authorities in this regard [cyber incident]," KE said.

The power utility in its brief statement said: "While all critical customer services including bill payment solutions and 118 call centres are operational and fully functional, to ensure the integrity of our systems, as a precautionary measure, we have isolated few non-critical services.

"As such customers may experience some disruption in accessing duplicate bills from the KE website. As an alternate, duplicate bills may be availed from the nearest K-Electric Customer Care Centre. Any inconvenience to customers is regretted as the power utility is following cybersecurity protocols."

This is not for the first time that the Pakistan-based firm has faced a cyberattack due to poor security infrastructure.

The country has been a victim of at least 11 suspected state-sponsored cyber operations since 2009.

Experts have underlined the need for improving cybersecurity infrastructure from time-to-time and urged firms to make right selections for the required hardware and software to protect from potential cyberattacks.

The Covid-19 pandemic has enhanced the pace of Pakistan's transformation to a digital economy, however, firms in the country are still losing an estimated Rs1 billion in online fraud every year.

"A single cyberattack can jeopardise your online businesses and services. Cost of reputational damages cannot be aggregated. You lose market share to competitors," an expert said, while speaking at an nternational Information Security Conference of Pakistan the other day.

The K-Electric reported the cyberattack only a day after announcing the appointment of its new chairman Shan Ashary on Tuesday.

The official statement said the newly elected chief had been on the board of directors of the company since 2005 and represented the longest serving member of the board.

“As the new chairman, his focus will be on operational excellence at the company across its generation, transmission and distribution functions to ensure safe, reliable and uninterrupted power supply to the company’s customers.

The K-Electric has come a long way since its privatisation in 2005, and has converted from an under-utilised strategic asset into a leading energy player today. With the unplanned growth of Karachi and other civic challenges, it continues to face challenges. The new chairman is committed to lead the utility contribute towards the development and growth of Karachi," the KE said.