Data breach will not hamper delivery of national IDs — PSA

The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) on Thursday gave assurances that the reported data breach will not hamper the agency’s delivery of the national IDs next year.

National Statistician and Civil Registrar General Claire Dennis Mapa said the PSA’s work on the national ID continues.

“Currently, the PSA field offices personnel are doing registration in far-flung areas of the country, including the geographically isolated and disadvantaged areas, to make sure that all Filipinos are registered to the national ID,” Mapa said in a reply via text message to Manila Standard.

“As the PSA mentioned in the [previous] statement, the national ID and civil registration systems and databases are not affected. We will provide regular update via official statement. My technical team is thoroughly checking at the moment,” Mapa replied when asked for the latest update on their investigations.

Mapa earlier said the timetable for the completion of the delivery of the physical IDs is September 2024.

Information about an alleged data leak last Oct. 7 involving a system managed by the PSA was posted by an unknown person on social media.

The PSA immediately activated its Data Breach Response Team (DBRT) and launched an investigation. The PSA has coordinated with the Compliance and Monitoring Division of the National Privacy Commission (NPC), the National Computer Emergency Response Team-Philippines (NCERT-PH) of the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT), and the Anti-Cybercrime Group of the Philippine National Police (PNP) in relation to this matter.

Mapa said from the initial assessment, the system allegedly affected was limited to the Community-Based Monitoring System (CBMS).

PSA describes CMBS as an organized technology-based system of collecting, processing and validating necessary disaggregated data that may be used for planning, program implementation and impact monitoring at the local level while empowering communities to participate in the process.

“The PSA is assessing what personal data from the CBMS may have been compromised and will share information with the relevant authorities and the public in due course,” Mapa said.

He said the agency was