Bank Indonesia Cyber Alert: Payment Operators Told to Report Incidents Faster as OJK and BI Activate Response Team

Bank Indonesia (BI) has raised its alert over cyber threats and told every payment-system operator to tighten security on critical infrastructure, flag suspicious transactions and report incidents faster. The alert came on 9 November, a day after the financial regulator OJK said the banking system was safe and put banks on 24-hour watch as screenshots of a Fortinet threat map spread online. Oleh Soleh of parliament's Commission I said the same day that no breach of the national banking system had been reported.

What the central bank asked for

Every operator must meet cyber security and resilience requirements, recovery included, Ramdan Denny Prakoso, head of BI's communications department, told Bloomberg Technoz. CNBC Indonesia reports that BI is working with OJK and the national cyber agency BSSN, and that it has asked the public to keep their data and transaction access confidential.

Also on 9 November, the Bank of Thailand was calling in every bank's CIO and moving attack reporting to daily.

OJK's letters and the response team

OJK and BI have activated the Tim Tanggap Insiden Siber (TTIS), a joint cyber incident response team. Dian Ediana Rae, OJK's head of banking supervision, told Antara that its IT supervisors have been in contact with every bank's IT staff since 6 November, and that his letters to bank boards ask them to stop anomalous transactions temporarily until they're cleared. Customers are asked to keep banking as usual.

What the ministers said

Coordinating economy minister Airlangga Hartarto said each bank "harus memperkuat cyber security-nya" (must strengthen its cyber security) and that he had taken the matter up with OJK. Dudung Abdurachman, coordinating minister for political and security affairs, said his deputy was meeting the banks and BSSN that day to gauge the impact.

The numbers behind the alarm

Katadata read the FortiGuard dashboard at 07:00 WIB and counted at least 1.6 million attacks on Indonesia in 24 hours, about 711,000 of them on banking, finance and insurance. At 15:02 WIB Antara's reading was 1.9 million attempts. When the dashboard first circulated on 7 November, Industry.co.id stressed its figures were "bukan jumlah serangan yang berhasil" (not the number of successful attacks).