Arya News - Readings from FortiGuard Labs, a threat intelligence arm of United States-based cybersecurity company Fortinet, showed that the country’s banking, finance, and insurance industries had been subject to over 1.2 million cyberattacks in 24 hours as of Monday evening.
JAKARTA – Indonesian banks have been pummeled in a wave of cyberattacks in recent days, with more than 1 million attempts over the past 24 hours, prompting regulators to take action in a bid to prevent breaches.
Readings from FortiGuard Labs, a threat intelligence arm of United States-based cybersecurity company Fortinet, showed that the country’s banking, finance and insurance industries had been subject to over 1.2 million cyberattacks in 24 hours as of Monday evening.
The technology industry trailed far behind with 434,000 attacks, above the government sector with 163,000 hits. The attacks on the banking industry jumped from 657,000 hits recorded during the weekend, according to a report from Indonesian daily Kompas.
Cybersecurity firm Kaspersky listed Indonesia as the 32nd most-attacked country in the world on Monday.
Financial Services Authority (OJK) banking supervision chief executive Dian Ediana Rae told The Jakarta Post on Monday that the OJK’s tech supervisor had been liaising with banks’ tech departments since last Friday to “step up alertness”.
“Last week I have reminded bank managements to remain alert about the increase in cyberattacks lately and undertake preventive measures,” said Dian.
He added that he had sent letters to banks containing technical steps to take, including extra attention to any “significant transactions” and pausing anomalous ones for verification, adding that banks were obliged to routinely carry out penetration tests, cyberattack simulations and tech audits in accordance with digital resilience rules.
Dian said both the OJK and Bank Indonesia (BI) had “activated” the Computer Security Incident Response Team (CSIRT), known in Indonesia under the acronym TTIS.
“The OJK urges the public to remain calm, transact as usual and comply with account security protocols required by each bank. Communication with banks should be done via the lenders’ official channels, and don’t respond to speculative news or news that is not based on accurate information,” said Dian.
Asked about the attack wave on Monday, Coordinating Economy Minister Airlangga Hartarto said such attacks “test the ability of our system” and told banks to “enhance” their cybersecurity, given today’s vulnerability.
PT Bank CIMB Niaga president director and CEO Lani Darmawan told the Post on Monday that she was “monitoring the situation” and the bank was currently undertaking preventive measures, such as issuing new security patches “in keeping with the regulator’s instruction”.
She said CIMB was still “safe” today and urged customers to follow security protocol.