Indonesia Orders Immediate Data Backup After Devastating Cyber Attack

After a devastating cyber attack, Indonesia has ordered an immediate securing of its state data centers. The government is currently conducting a comprehensive review of data security, following what is considered the most severe attack of this kind in the country's history. Semuel Abrijani Pangerapan, Director-General for Applications and Information at the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, resigned on Thursday. This follows last month's massive cyber attack that crippled government services from airports to scholarships. Pangerapan stated that he bore "moral responsibility." The attack affected more than 280 agencies, many of which lost their data. The hacker group that took responsibility unexpectedly apologized and provided a key to unlock the stolen data—even after the government announced it would not pay the $8 million ransom. The Ministry confirmed the key's effectiveness and is working on a full system recovery, which could last until next month. So far, only 2% of the data has been recovered, with the rest considered lost. President Joko Widodo has ordered a review of cybersecurity and the immediate backup of national data centers. All government agencies are now required to have multiple backup options. "The most important thing is to find solutions to ensure this does not happen again," emphasized Jokowi, as the President is commonly known. However, the measures have not fully reassured the public; over 23,000 signatures in a petition call for the resignation of Communications Minister Budi Arie Setiadi. Jokowi stated that "everything will be evaluated." The attack led to long queues at the immigration offices of many major airports in Indonesia. With systems down, officers had to manually record each passenger's passport and flight data. Additionally, the data of thousands of scholarship recipients was lost. According to Alfons Tanujaya, an Indonesian cybersecurity expert and head of the local technology association Aptiknas, fundamental standards of data security were not upheld, and proper backups were non-existent. It is the first time a government official has resigned due to a cyber attack. "This can be seen as the largest cyber attack in Indonesia's history," he stated. The state-owned telecommunications company PT Telkom Indonesia, whose subsidiary operates the compromised data center, acknowledged system weaknesses. Many security measures such as disaster recovery plans and backup options were inadequately present, said Muhamad Hidayat, information security analyst at Jakarta-based technology firm PT. SysTech Global Informasi. The extent of the hack compromised "almost all" government data since the center managed data across multiple ministries. Cyber attacks are frequent in Indonesia; in the past two years, at least 113 cases of data breaches have been reported, according to digital rights organization SAFEnet. Recently, hackers released personal data of hundreds of police officers and soldiers and changed the name of the Justice Ministry's official YouTube channel to "Tesla.