State servers downed by water leak – report released

There was no flood or fire warning system in the server room that was brought down by a water leak in April last year, and no CCTV monitoring, a report outlining some of the details of the investigation into the incident said on Thursday.

In an exclusive, Politis published some details from the 108-page report into how the government websites were damaged by a water leak in the server room at the finance ministry.

The report has not been officially released.

Deputy Research Minister Philippos Hadjizacharias, speaking after the cabinet meeting on Thursday, said it was a “huge report” which he only received on January 2 and would need time to study it, which was already underway.

He will then prepare his own report and forward it to the legal service in due course.

On April 10 last year, water began to leak into the room in which the servers were housed at around 6:30pm as a result of a broken pump and water tank leak in the basement of the finance ministry’s building. Technicians subsequently switched the machines off, taking state websites offline.

According to the details published by Politis, there were persistent weaknesses and malfunctions as well as inadequacies within the IT Services Department when it came to the servers.

It also said the investigation did not identify who was responsible, only that key people involved in the affair had already retired.

The probe reportedly found that among other things, the server room had no flood or fire warning system.

It also pointed out that in 2019, experts from an international company had warned of the dangers of placing servers under water tanks and classified the room as high risk.

The conclusion includes the testimony of an official saying there had been other water leaks in the past and that the water had been scooped up with containers.

On Wednesday, Hadjizacharias announced that the probe had been completed. In a post on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, Hadjizacharias said “the administrative investigation I requested into the April 10 water leak at the government internet hub has been completed and delivered to my office.”

The investigation centred on issues such as the fact that the servers had not been relocated from the finance ministry’s building to the Cyprus Telecommunications Authority (Cyta).

The move had been planned and passed through cabinet under former President Nicos Anastasiades in November 2022, but the move still had not happened six months later when the flood occurred.

Hadjizacharias said on Thursday that “within a reasonable period of time after the incident with the servers they were moved to another place outside the ministry of finance”. This happened on April 23, he said.