By Prashanth Parameswaran
On the brink of a cyberwar, the country is forming a national cyber agency.
Earlier this month, Indonesia announced that it would form a National Cyber Agency (NCA) to coordinate an integrated defense against rising cyber attacks.
The move is long overdue given the country’s vulnerability. For much of 2013 and 2014, Akamai Technologies, a U.S.-based firm, found that Indonesia consistently ranked as one of the world’s top three sources of cyber attacks. The country’s own communications and information ministry corroborates this data, revealing, for instance, that a staggering 36.6 million cyber attacks were recorded in the country in the past three years.
The problem has reportedly worsened since Indonesia’s new president Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, took office in October last year. Muhammad Salahuddin, the vice chairman for operations and network security at the Indonesia Security Incident Response Team on Internet Infrastructure (ID-SIRTII), told FutureGov magazine recently that attacks have doubled just in the last four months. The risk for Jokowi, Muhammad says, will only increase as his administration plans on bringing several critical services online in fields such as infrastructure and healthcare. Just last month, Jokowi’s defense minister, Ryamizard Ryacudu, warned that Indonesia was on the brink of nothing less than a cyber war. Scholars might quibble with his terminology, but the urgency that he attempted to communicate was unmistakable.
Read the full story at The Diplomat