FIRST Heritage Co-operative Credit Union (FHC) is cautioning members to be on high alert for unusual financial activities over the next few weeks, following a recent cyber attack that caused disruptions to its database.

In an advisory to members on Wednesday, FHC said that it has spent much of its time over the past few weeks trying to resolve the system disruption that took place on April 3, 2024.

The cyber incident was said to have impacted the credit union’s ability to access some of its information, which delayed the processing of financial services requested by members.

It added that personal data possibly impacted during the attack include member contact information and other data or documents shared with the credit union from time to time, in order to process member’s transactions.

“However, our investigations so far indicate that our IT security mechanisms were helpful in significantly minimising the risk of access to data on our core systems,” it said.

Further assessments also revealed that there was no impact on the “integrity” of the financial accounts of members and clients or on the accounts of the organisations, FHC added.

The FHC said once the breach was recognised it took immediate steps to investigate the issue, with the help of its technology partners, and also moved promptly to contain the threat, activate data back-up and recovery measures, and put additional controls in place.

Later, in-house cyber incident response measures were activated which allowed FHC to quickly restore services.

The financial institution said that as part of its safety measures it has initiated a password reset prompt for users of its iTransact banking platform.

In addition, FHC has increased the use of automated tools to identify and block any suspicious activity that might occur on accounts or on its IT infrastructure.

“We are also actively engaged with cyber security and law enforcement authorities,” it said.

In the meantime, the financial institution wants members to be on high alert for suspicious financial activities and has recommended that members regularly change their iTransact banking password.

“If you use the same or similar passwords for other online services we recommend you set new passwords on those accounts as well. Be reminded that following a data breach, a common occurrence is that you may begin receiving phishing emails or other unsolicited contact,” the advisory said.

“It is therefore important to be vigilant and contact the relevant party or organisation to query any suspicious emails or other uninvited contact you receive in order to determine its legitimacy,” FHC continued.

The attack on the financial institution took place just days before global cybersecurity company Fortinet published information that Jamaica received 43 million attempted cyber attacks in 2023.

Fortinet said the Latin American and Caribbean region suffered 200 billion attempted attacks in 2023, accounting for 14.5 per cent of the total reported globally last year. Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia were the Latin American countries with the highest cyber attack activity in 2023.

The figure is lower when compared to the previous year’s 360 billion attempted cyber attacks. However, Fortinet reasoned that fewer attacks are leading to greater volumes of unique exploits and new malware and ransomware variants that are much more targeted.