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UPDATE: The issue has been resolved and the government's email service is back up and running.
Original Story:
The Ministry of Technology, Innovation and Citizens’ Services says a computer virus shut down the government’s email service Thursday morning.
A statement was released from Bette-Jo Hughes, chief information officer, regarding the malware situation.
"This morning a computer virus caused by a malicious file attachment has infected the government's email servers. As soon as we became aware of the issue, we took immediate steps to mitigate the exposure to the government network and protect against the loss of information.
"Government takes this matter very seriously. As a precaution, we have temporarily disabled our email servers while we work with our vendors to resolve the issue.
"Protection of our data and networks is a top priority and we are working with our vendors to remove and secure the e-mail system as quickly as possible."
ATTENTION: Prov Permit Centre experiencing Email network issues. No emails in or out (submissions/issued permits). Thnx for patience #BCtrks
— BC Transportation (@TranBC) December 18, 2014
The BC Transportation Twitter account was the first to notify residents that there was an issue with provincial email accounts when it tweeted at around 10:30 a.m. The province has not indicated how or when the incident occurred but says they are working to resolve the issue.
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