Disclaimer: This article is an editorial that highlights the problems in Indonesia today

PIKIRAN RAKYAT - Indonesia’s Temporary National Data Center (PDNS) still remains inaccessible, up until Sunday, June 23 2024, and has affected many public services. This error started to occur on Thursday, 20 June 2024. The incident was suspicioned to have happened as a result of a ransomware attack.

Cyber Security Expert, Ismail Hakim, stated that the data center of PDN would have returned back to normal if the server failure was caused by common errors or technical error, because Service Level Agreement exists.

“It’s very unwise if PDN, who handles many critical infrastructures, is down for this long. With that being said, this issue has made many cyber security experts consider that the incident must have been caused by ransomware,” said Ismail, on Sunday, 23 June 2024.

He believed that the Ministry of Communication and Information (Kemenkominfo), as a ministry that oversees PDN and conducts governance towards Indonesia’s information, is talented and possesses a good security system. Meanwhile, PDN themselves, as a national data center, should have certifications for its information security and data center management systems.

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With that, such massive attacks on PDN could signify that at least one or more cyber security elements do not work optimally. These elements include governance, identification, preventives, threat detection, threat response, and recovery.

Ismail mentioned that the recovery process of a ransomware attack highly depends on how ‘prepared’ the victims are. If there are no preparations done, then it might lead to massive financial losses. There is also a chance that the data cannot be recovered.

Ismail, as the CEO and Founder of Cyberkarta, one of the startups in the cyber security sector, considered that PDN does not have a good nor tested recovery process yet to maintain system availability.

“Before such incidents occur, PDN should have a tested and documented process to keep the service running as one of the layers of security towards the impacts of cyber attacks,” he said.

This must be pressed as PDN provides services for many crucial infrastructures in Indonesia. Crucial infrastructure servers should have a 24/7 uptime because it stores and handles many important pieces of information such as immigration data, community healthcare data, etc.

The system error of PDN Kemenkominfo affected immigration services throughout Indonesia on Thursday, June 20, 2024. This resulted in a long line of queue of immigration inspection in a number of airports and has been complained by many people on X.

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PDN is an important facility that is created to store, manage, and secure the data that belongs to a number of government agencies. PDN’s system is not only utilized by the general directorate of immigration, but also by the ministry and many other institutions.

Ismail also said that in Indonesia, many leaders only care to view cyber security and prevention. For example, antivirus, firewalls, etc. When in actuality, solving modern cyber threats also requires a modern mindset.

So, if attacks are not detected by the preventive systems, there is still one more layer of protection. Aside from that, seeing the long impact of this cyber attack, it can be phrased that PDN’s system backup and restore are not thoroughly tested.

According to Ismail, the incident that happened to PDN may decrease the public’s trust towards the ministry or even the institution trusted to manage Kominfo’s information. He hoped that Kemenkominfo could manage the security of PDN, especially because many crucial infrastructures are based on PDN.

“I hope the government can keep collaborating with many talented people of Indonesia. There are many leaders and cyber security engineers in Indonesia who can help secure PDN,” Ismail said.*** (Politeknik Negeri Bandung/Yeurley Arba Nabila)