Biman delayed disbursing salary as hacked server yet to be fully restored

The Biman Bangladesh Airlines had delayed clearing salaries of April as it could not completely restore the server even though one-and-a-half months have passed since facing the cyber attack on 18 March.

Usually, staff of the national carrier receive their salary at the end of the month but they received the April salary on 7 May.

They have been facing difficulties since March as Biman lost its internal payroll data after the attack, said a senior executive of the company.

Contacted, Tahera Khandaker, general manager of the public relations division, said they got the salary for April on 7 May. The delay was not because of the fund crisis but the slow recovery of the internal server's new backup system after the cyber attack.

At present, Biman has nearly 6,500 employees under its payroll, according to the carrier.

"Biman's internal payroll system could not be recovered, hence the delay," said a senior executive of the IT department.

"However, the IT department has recovered the accounting system and processed the salary on 7 March. Yet, some other internal communication systems could not be recovered," he added.

In March, Biman disbursed the salary manually due to not having access to the accounting system.

Earlier on 18 March, Biman's server was subjected to a cyber attack. The company issued a press release over the incident on 23 March, releasing the information that some computers of the company had come under malware attack and that the suspected servers were immediately isolated.

The press release added that the national carrier introduced an alternate cloud service to run its regular operational activities.