Philippines DTI loses a year of accounting records to ransomware

A 2025 COA audit found that a December 21, 2025 ransomware attack left the Philippines' Department of Trade and Industry without nearly a year of accounting records, with data recoverable only up to January 23, 2025. The database sat on a shared server with no offline or physical backups, forcing manual recovery and delaying financial reporting.

• Attack hit on December 21, 2025; records recovered only up to January 23, 2025
• DTI's accounting database ran on a shared server with no offline or paper backups
• COA urged a separate server, regular backups and offline copies on external drives
• DTI cited lack of storage space and manpower for the missing copies