Servers holding information on companies registered in the Cayman Islands have not been hacked, Government officials confirmed today.

Erroneous reports that the Registry of Companies servers had been compromised have prompted a number of queries to Government, said the Registry’s Senior Assistant Registrar Donnell Dixon.

In addition to the servers not being hacked, he said there has been no interference with the Cayman Islands Online Registry Information Service (CORIS), through which certain information is shared between local financial services agents and the Registry.

‘Just like any member of the public is able to do, the person who claims to have hacked our servers conducted a search for companies on the Registry’s website’, Mr Dixon said.

‘He then cut and pasted the names of these companies onto a template, in order to create bogus certificates. To the unsuspecting public, these fake certificates appear to be authentic’.

Mr Dixon also noted that it’s impossible to obtain the certificate image from the Registry’s website, as the image is not stored on the server.

‘Not storing the image on the server is one of the simpler ways in which we protect data,’ he said. ‘But just like any other organisation – whether it’s a government department or a private-sector company – the Registry’s website features robust security features that avert information theft’.

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This is in answer to our query to them re Friday’s (15) story in iNews Cayman “200,000 Caymans Corporations hacked for art project” at: http://www.ieyenews.com/2013/02/200000-caymans-corporations-hacked-for-art-project/