INDONESIA TIGHTENS CYBERSECURITY AFTER RANSOMWARE ATTACK

JAKARTA, July 12 (Bernama-Xinhua) -- The recent cyberattack in Indonesia, which massively disrupted its national data system, has urged the country to strengthen its cyber resilience and evaluate its digital technology policy, reported Xinhua.

Indonesian Coordinating Minister for Political, Legal and Security Affairs, Hadi Tjahjanto, said on Friday that the government would carry out digital security improvement and strengthen the system capabilities of its national data centre.

"We are designing the data centre with the ability to have multiple back-ups, layered back-ups with strong security measures. We want it to be a system that cannot be hacked. This will continue to be done to support the government's performance in serving the public," stated Tjahjanto.

Indonesia's Ministry of Communication and Informatics is currently preparing to execute what it calls as "tenant redeploy", aimed at enhancing the digital security in governance according to stricter standard operating procedures.

"We'll execute it from August to September 2024," the ministry's Director General of Informatics Applications, Ismail, said on Thursday.

The ransomware attack that targeted Indonesia's national data centre and created a massive data crisis started on June 17 and went on for almost one week. Initially, the hacker demanded a ransom of US$8 million.

According to the Ministry of Communication and Informatics and the National Cyber and Encryption Agency, at least 282 institutions were disrupted by the attack. This included the immigration services, leading to long queues at the airports due to system bottlenecks at the immigration checkpoints.  The attack also disrupted educational institutions during the student enrolment period ahead of the new academic year.

Following the incident, there were reports that many citizens in Indonesia demanded the resignation of  Communication and Informatics Minister, citing his failure to protect the public's data.

The financial industry in Indonesia, considered as the most vulnerable institution to hackers, continues to increase its cybersecurity capacity in an effort to anticipate the threat of cyberattacks. This includes meeting cybersecurity standards and conducting simulations to prepare for potential cyberattacks.

Indonesia's Financial Services Authority, a government agency that regulates and supervises the financial services sector, launched cybersecurity guidelines on Tuesday tailored for all technology innovation organisers within the financial sector in the country.

The guidelines provide a cyber capacity-building programme covering data protection, risk management, incident response, maturity assessment, training, and awareness, prioritising the principles of collaboration and information exchange.

Meanwhile, the Indonesian Internet Service Providers Association (APJII) stated that it is preparing to form a task force that would focus on cybersecurity, particularly to prevent the negative impacts of burgeoning technological innovation.

"We want to gather related stakeholders to provide inputs to the government in cases related to cybersecurity," APJII Chairman Muhammad Arif said on Wednesday.

He also said that APJII, which currently has 1,087 members of Internet service providers across Indonesia, had begun to develop support for maintaining the security in cyberspace.

-- BERNAMA-XINHUA