Australia’s first attempt to conduct a census online has resumed almost two days after it shut down due to what an angry prime minister described as system failures that left it vulnerable to cyberattack.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull on Thursday blamed failures of the Australian Bureau of Statics and systems provider IBM after the$360 million national survey was taken offline on Tuesday.

IBM (NYSE: IBM) issued what U.K. news site The Register called a “meek apology” over the incident.

[Story continues below IBM stock information from Graphiq.]

“We genuinely regret the inconvenience that has occurred. We want to thank the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the Australian Signal Directorate and [Australian cyber-security chief] Alastair MacGibbon for their continued support. IBM’s priority over the last two days was to work with the ABS to restore the Census site,” IBM said in an email sent to The Register.

“We are committed to our role in the delivery of this project. Continuing to maintain the privacy and security of personal information is paramount. The Australian Signals Directorate has confirmed no data was compromised. Our cyber-security experts are partnering with national intelligence agencies to ensure the ongoing integrity of the site.”

The bureau removed the site because a digital shield failed to block traffic from a fourth denial-of-service attack that came from somewhere overseas.

“These denial-of-service attacks are absolutely commonplace, they are highly predictable, they were inevitably going to happen to the census website,” Turnbull told Sydney Radio 2GB early Thursday.

“Measures that ought to have been in place to prevent these denial-of-service attacks interfering with access to the website were not put in place — that is a fact, that was a failure. That was compounded by some … technical hardware failures and inadequate redundancy,” he said.

He said the system failures had been rectified at his personal direction under the supervision of government’s top electronic security and intelligence agency, Australian Signals Directorate.

Media targets IBM

Media headlines have targeted IBM in the attacks. A sample:

  • IBM under fire as census blame game starts (The Australian Financial Review)
  • ‘Heads will roll’: PM shifts Census blame to IBM and public servants – The Mandarin
  • Turnbull slams IBM for ‘inadequate’ #CensusFail planning (CNET)
  • Cloud hangs over IBM after Australian census catastrophe (Forbes)

The bureau later tweeted that the website is available again almost 43 hours after it was shut down.

The bureau thanked followers for their patience and apologized for the inconvenience.

IBM employs thousands of people across North Carolina.