Docomo Pacific subscribers in the CNMI were bereft of internet service last Friday and Saturday after a cyberattack was perpetrated against the telco\u2019s servers.<\/p>\n
A Friday new release from Docomo Pacific president and CEO Roderick Boss confirmed the attack.\u00a0 \u201cEarly this morning, a cyber security incident occurred and some of our servers were attacked. Immediate failsafe protocols were initiated by Docomo Pacific cyber security technicians to shut down affected servers and to isolate the intrusion. Docomo Pacific\u2019s customer data, mobile network services, and fiber services remain unaffected, protected, and secure at this time. We are working to restore service as soon as possible,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Following the cyberattack, Docomo Pacific, which is a subsidiary of Japan\u2019s NTT Docomo, said customers were encouraged to utilize their mobile data to tether other devices such as laptops and tablets at no additional cost, as the time of restoration, at that time, was still unknown.<\/p>\n
Aside from the internet disruption, there was no immediate word from Docomo Pacific on the exact nature of the cyberattack or where it originated from.<\/p>\n
As of yesterday morning, some services have slowly been returning to normal functions and a number of subscribers already had their internet connectivity restored.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cServices are slowly coming online as services are restored. Our top priority at this moment is getting everyone back online and working on post-restoration efforts after that,\u201d said Docomo Pacific Public Relations manager Jared Roberto.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Docomo Pacific went on to say in its press release that updates will be posted on their social media. For more information or to discuss your service in detail, call Guam 671-688-CARE or CNMI 670-488-CARE.<\/p>\n
Docomo Pacific CNMI brand manager Brett Deleon Guerrero confirmed yesterday that internet and mobile phone services were finally restored at 2pm last Saturday. He also added that the telco will compensate subscribers who lost services during the outage.<\/p>\n
Damage caused<\/strong><\/p>\n CNMI customers understandably were frustrated and upset with the internet outage.<\/p>\n Attorney Michael White, of The Law Offices of Michael A. White, LLC, said his work has been interrupted, with internet being unavailable.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI am critically dependent on email. I haven\u2019t had any since yesterday (Friday)\u2026 I don\u2019t know if anything Docomo could do could compensate for the damage they have caused,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Businesses like restaurants also had to turn away customers who don\u2019t have cash or have them pay at a later date as their credit card machines are dependent on the internet.<\/p>\n Plumeria Steakhouse general manager Steve Jang said his establishment not being able to accept credit cards has hurt his restaurant the past two days.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not sure of other businesses but the concept and procedures are all the same. Nowadays people use credit cards for means of payment and if the internet is not doing their services, then it\u2019s cash or IOU\u2019s (I owe you). …I don\u2019t like my customers walking out of my establishment for whatever reasons. \u2026As much as possible, I\u2019d like to accommodate. \u2026All I can say is that this internet trouble has hurt me as about 40% of my business has been down from my normal revenue,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n BAB Korean Restaurant\u2019s Dante Suarez Conlu said their business has also been affected, saying that 65% of their customers use credit cards.\u00a0<\/p>\n The past two days, he allowed customers who didn\u2019t have cash to dine-in with the promise of paying them back later.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re very considerate so we allowed them to eat then pay later,\u201d while admitting that out of 10 customers who were allowed this gesture only one usually doesn\u2019t come back, saying \u201cmaybe they just forgot.\u201d<\/p>\n Bravo Kitchen & Bar owner Adrian Ruan said his Garapan restaurant also had to endure the outage.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cYes, no signal, resulting in inability for use by guests.\u00a0 Sometimes it works\u2026Said to be \u2018waiting, under maintenance!\u2019 \u201cWe\u2019re affected, but many guests have expressed their understanding.\u00a0 However, having to pay in cash is a big deal for me. \u2026It\u2019s been very embarrassing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Like Conlu and Jang, Ruan said he also resorted to IOUs as a way to mitigate the unavailability of credit card machines.<\/p>\n \u201cI can only record identities and credit cards.\u00a0 Sometimes after waiting for 10 minutes, there is a little signal, and the card reader can\u2019t be used. We will just charge their credit cards when there is internet,\u201d he said, while adding that he\u2019s already up to $200 on this type of credit arrangement.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Docomo Pacific subscribers in the CNMI were bereft of internet service last Friday and Saturday…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":387645,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-387644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=387644"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387644\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/387645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=387644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=387644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=387644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}