The head of Lithuania’s Centre of Registers, Adrijus Jusas, is stepping down following a law enforcement investigation into a large-scale data leak involving hundreds of thousands of records.
The agency said Giedrius Čininas, currently head of the Prevention Department, will serve as acting director until a permanent replacement is appointed.
According to the statement, Jusas made the decision after meeting Deputy Economy and Innovation Minister Darius Žalskas on Monday.
Jusas, who has led the agency since June 2023, said recent events had shown that malicious actors can remain ahead of institutions despite efforts to strengthen cyber security.
He said the incident highlighted the need for closer cooperation between state institutions to improve cyber resilience.
“Given the sensitivity of the situation, I have decided to step down and hand over responsibility to other professionals,” he said.
Economy and Innovation Minister Edvinas Grikšas said the acting director’s immediate priority would be to ensure continuity of operations and cooperation with authorities investigating the breach and overseeing data protection.
The ministry said consultations were continuing with the Defence Ministry, the National Cyber Security Centre and cyber security experts on additional measures to strengthen state data protection systems.
Authorities believe third parties may have illegally obtained extracts from the Real Estate Register using the login credentials of an authorised data recipient. More than 600,000 records may have been affected.
Lithuania’s Prosecutor General’s Office has opened a pre-trial investigation into the incident.
Earlier apology
In an interview with BNS published on Monday morning, Jusas apologised for the incident:
“First of all, we would genuinely like to apologise to all citizens whose data was obtained by malicious actors. We promptly closed the identified vulnerabilities, informed the relevant authorities, introduced new control measures and are fully prepared to communicate with everyone affected by providing all necessary information.”
Jusas also said it would take around €50m over three years to modernise the systems, but politicians had so far refused to allocate additional funding.
“In our assessment, because of the poor condition of the systems, around €50m to €60m is needed in total to properly bring them up to current standards,” he said. “Over the past several years, we have repeatedly discussed the required funding with representatives of various ministries and with government officials. Unfortunately, no major changes or decisions have been made, and these challenges remain.”
According to Jusas, the leaked data included information from extracts of the real estate register, including people’s personal identification numbers.
However, he said no contact details, such as phone numbers or email addresses, payment information for the centre’s services, bank account numbers or documents had been disclosed.
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