The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), the government agency tasked with promoting business development and digital competitiveness, could not even recover its own accounting records after a ransomware attack.
By Bilyonaryo staff
The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), the government agency tasked with promoting business development and digital competitiveness, could not even recover its own accounting records after a ransomware attack.
Worse, the department led by Secretary Cristina Roque had no accessible backups and ended up asking the Commission on Audit (COA) for copies of its own financial documents to reconstruct nearly a year’s worth of transactions.
According to COA’s 2025 annual audit report, a ransomware attack on December 21, 2025 left DTI scrambling to restore its accounting database.
The department managed to recover records only up to January 23, 2025, forcing its Accounting Division to reenter transactions covering most of the year and delaying the preparation of its financial statements.
The recovery exposed a series of weaknesses in DTI’s data protection and recordkeeping.
COA found that the accounting database was hosted on a shared server, cloud backups were inaccessible, and no alternative offline or physical backups had been maintained.
“The audit found that following the ransomware attack on December 21, 2025, the Department experienced significant difficulties in restoring its accounting records due to weaknesses in its data recovery and records management controls,” COA said.
The problems did not end with the computers.
DTI’s Accounting Division had also failed to retain copies of journal entry vouchers, disbursement vouchers and supporting documents that could have helped reconstruct the missing records.
DTI blamed a lack of storage space for paper records and insufficient manpower to scan documents.
COA rejected the explanation, stressing the importance of maintaining copies of accounting documents to safeguard public funds and ensure proper financial reporting.
Without its own complete set of paper or electronic records, DTI had to turn to COA for copies of accounting documents previously submitted to the auditors, further slowing the reconstruction process.
In effect, the agency responsible for helping Philippine businesses modernize and become more competitive had to rely on government auditors to recover its own financial paperwork.
“The absence of both physical and electronic copies increases the risk of incomplete documentation, delays in financial reporting, and difficulty in audit verification,” COA said.
The auditors recommended moving DTI’s accounting database to a separate server, conducting regular backups in a secure environment, and maintaining an additional offline copy, such as an external hard drive.
They also urged the department to retain paper or electronic copies of accounting documents instead of relying on records held by COA.
DTI management agreed to the recommendations.
Despite the disruption, COA concluded that DTI’s financial statements as of December 31, 2025 were fairly presented, finding no material errors or omissions affecting reported account balances.
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