One of the biggest state banks in the country of Venezuela is the Bank of Venezeula and it is now experience an outage due to which its customers have been denied services for five days. A PR statement by the bank stated that this outage was a consequence of a ‘terrorist attack’, which was launched against the national financial system. It had been carried out in the form of a massive hack. There were more than 16 million customers of the state bank that were still without services due to this occurrence. The Bank of Venezuela is one of the country’s biggest financial institutions and it services more than the number of customers mentioned above.
However, the outage means that its online platform hasn’t had any service for the last five days. Bank customers had begun complaining of outages for banking services from September 15th and a few of them had shared their concerns about it on social media. At that time, local media was informed by one of the bank’s employees that the outage was because of a number of adaptations that were being made to the bank’s online platform as part of its support for the Digital Bolivar redenomination plan. A PR statement had been issued by the bank on September 16th that it was working to restore the services.
But, this did not happen and yet another statement was issued by the bank on September 17th where it revealed that the institution had suffered from a hack as an attempt to launch a ‘terrorist attack’ on the country’s national financial system. The statement also informed users that their financial information remained safe, but the bank was still working on restoring its services. They did not provide any additional details. The aftermath was that more than 16 million people who use the bank’s services were unable to access the online platform for a week.
This means that a number of people were unable to buy goods and services and they are still trying to meet their everyday expenses. A number of users complained about this matter and said that they were unable to buy medicines and food for their families due to the outage. However, a statement was released by the Bank of Venezuela, promising restitution of its services. They were expected to resume from September 20th and they added that integrity of all data had been preserved, which means that users will be able to use the same information for accessing their accounts.
This is undoubtedly one of the longest outages that have been faced by any bank in history of the country. Moreover, this particular outage has also reinforced the idea of having an alternative financial system in place, such as cryptocurrencies, which would be helpful in dealing with such an event in the future. Having access to cryptocurrencies for their buying and selling needs could make a big difference to people and prevent them from having to suffer any disastrous consequences due to such outages.