More than three weeks after its data center was hacked, the Power Development Department has restored its online platforms enabling the consumers to make online payments from tomorrow.
Calling it a “major breakthrough”, a PDD official said that the bill generation service has been restored for the consumers.
The official said that the online platforms including the bill Sahuliyat app and the bill Sahuliyat website have been restored for online payments. “Consumers will be able to make online payments from Monday,” he said.
“Our bill generation system was badly hit due to the malware attack and we were unable to generate monthly bills for our consumers. Although our parallel billing system that covers some areas was working, our billing system that caters to rural towns and Srinagar was down and bill generation got delayed by a few days.
“We have finally restored all the bill generation systems and incorporated all the billing data of over 2 lakh consumers back to our system which has enabled us to generate our monthly bills,” the official said.
When contacted, department’s CEO for IT wing, Shurjeel Lalla said that since the bill Sahuliyat app and the website have been restored now, consumers will be able to make online payments from Monday.
“By Tuesday consumers will start getting hardcopies of their electricity bills. Our IT team has worked 24×7 to make sure restoration is completed as soon as possible,” he said.
The hacking of four of its servers at the PDD data center had taken place on the morning of 24 June.