IRC’s system outage still remains, ICT team working to restore

The Internal Revenue Commission [IRC] has experienced a system outage since the 29th of January 2025.

The outage is having a huge impact on clients and businesses as many are still waiting to receive approvals and clearances, slowing down their business operations.

A staff at IRC who wants to remain anonymous said that work is in progress to fix system outage.

“It’s almost two weeks now. The manual forms are filing up. We are only waiting for the ICT team to fix it. Hopefully any time this week it will be fixed.”

Founder of PNG Cybersecurity Limited, Solomon Sua told NBC News, when a government agency handling critical data is targeted, the risks are high.

“Firstly, Data Compromise – Sensitive taxpayer information [such as financial records and personal details] could be exposed or manipulated.

“Operational Disruptions – Core services could be taken offline, delaying tax processing, compliance approvals, and clearances.

“Financial & Reputational Damage – Any data breach could erode public trust and impact national revenue collection.

“Cyber Extortion – If ransomware is involved, attackers may demand payment to restore access to systems,” he said.

Mr. Sua said the immediate response & recovery measures would include, isolating affected systems to prevent further spread, deploying forensic investigation teams to determine the attack source, restoring secure backups to ensure system integrity, strengthening access controls & patching vulnerabilities and communicating effectively with stakeholders while ensuring transparency.

“Cyber threats are becoming increasingly sophisticated, and this incident, as reported, underscores the urgent need for a more assertive national cybersecurity posture.

“We encourage all government entities and businesses to review their cybersecurity frameworks, conduct regular security audits, and engage professionals to fortify their digital infrastructure,” he added.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported that, “Papua New Guinea's version of the Australian Taxation Office has been targeted in a major cyber-attack that has potentially exposed sensitive data of citizens and businesses.”

“The ABC understands Australia, which can deploy roving teams of cyber experts to help Pacific Island nations deal with growing online threats, has offered support to PNG, but it has not been taken up.”

NBC News attempted for a week to get comments from the IRC Commissioner General Sam Koim, which has been unsuccessful.

This unfortunate outage occurred at a time IRC’s focus is into digitizing all its revenue streams and in order to meet the government’s revenue target of K19.4 billion this year, an increase from last year’s K17.3 billion [14% increase] revenue target.