The Distribution Wing of the Power Development Department (PDD) is finally going to have an Annual Maintenance Contract (AMC) for its Bemina data center.
The move, aimed to keep the data centre protected and up to date, comes two years after the contract expired and left the data center without maintenance cover.
The officials said that the need to have an updated annual maintenance contract was felt more when the data center faced a major malware attack on June 24, leaving all its online services defunct.
According to official documents of the department, the tenders for AMC have already been floated and would be awarded in a month or two.
“We have received a good response to the tenders of one-year maintenance contract that cover all necessary aspects of the data center’s maintenance including its protection and keeping it up to date,” an official said.
In June, Greater Kashmir published a series of news stories after the malware attack that crippled the data center servers.
Following the attack, PDD’s online platforms like its websites and online billing services were rendered defunct.
It took the IT teams of PDD nearly a month to restore the systems.
The officials said not having a maintenance contract made the system more vulnerable to such attacks.
They said an annual maintenance contract was vital to keep the software and hardware up to date and save it from any future attack.
Talking to Greater Kashmir, PDD’s CEO for IT Wing, Shurjeel Lala said the tenders had been floated and the process would be completed at the earliest.
“PDD is doing all it can do to enhance the IT Wing in Kashmir by upgrading both the equipment and software,” Shurjeel said.
He said PDD was also working to make the system more secure and user friendly.
In 2011 end, PDD laid the foundation for its data center, which was inaugurated in June 2014 and had a maintenance contract with an IT company ‘WIPRO’ that expired in 2018. The contract has not been renewed since. The data center was part of PDD’s many initiatives to make the power sector IT-driven.