After watching 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968 and watching HAL 9000, faced with the prospect of disconnection, HAL decides to kill the astronauts to protect and continue his programmed directives. After that, I was never a big fan of computers.

However, times change and we must keep up or be left behind. I bought a computer and found a ten-year-old kid to show me how to use it — and, yes, it has made my life, should I say, a little easier. I can do my banking, pay my bills, get food delivered and even buy a plane ticket to go and see the kids.

However, I started reading stories of people, especially my age, losing their life savings from fraud, scams, banks and hotels being hacked, and even companies being hacked or being held to ransom. The nightmare of HAL came back! My first thought was to unplug the computer and abandon the world of technology altogether.

However, the more I thought about it and the more I talked to people, it became clear that I could take steps to protect myself against these threats. Apart from adding a security program, the big one is not to open e-mails with strange e-mail addresses or click on any links in the message. Even right now as I’m writing, I’ve just received an e-mail from One Communications saying “view your monthly statement”. I don’t use One Comm. Obviously, a scam/phishing attack.

So now I am asking. Am I the only one who felt embarrassed when our premier announced that the “Russkies” had hacked the government network, even though he did not say it as such, mostly like we were being held at ransom? By the way, it has not been confirmed that it was in fact the Russians.

I found it strange that the Premier tried to play down what had happened by saying, “There has been an incident, which is affecting not only the Bermuda Government but some other regional governments as well”, without saying which other governments have been affected, So I guess it’s OK since it happened to “other governments”?

But it is neither here nor there that other governments may have suffered the same disruption. We are Bermuda! We are supposed to be the leaders of international business; we are trying to attract more national money, whether in exempt companies, hotels or the cryptocurrency business that we seem to be working so hard to attract. This should not be happening!

Who will want to invest in our island now if the Government can’t even protect us from a cyberattack causing widespread internet outages and disruption affecting most government agencies and beyond? The hackers explore large organisations to find their weakest link and this time they hit the jackpot!

So who is to blame here? Where is the accountability? Will we ever be told exactly what happened? If we are being held at ransom, then the Government has no choice but to pay it; how much of the taxpayer’s money did it cost? If they do pay it, who’s to say they won’t demand more? So many questions need to be answered, but will they be?

The ironic thing is that if we have to pay the ransom, we will probably have to do it in cryptocurrency, the very business we are trying to attract, which is very tough to trace.