OJK Tells Indonesian Banks to Halt Anomalous Transactions

Indonesia’s Financial Services Authority (OJK) has told banks to step up monitoring of large transactions and temporarily halt any that look anomalous until they are verified, as cyberattack attempts on the country’s finance sector rise, The Star reported on Monday (Nov 9), citing The Jakarta Post.

The instruction came from Dian Ediana Rae, OJK’s chief executive of banking supervision, who also urged customers to stay calm. He gave written answers to state news agency Antara and spoke to business daily Kontan.

Regulator’s instructions

According to Antara, OJK’s banking IT supervisors have been coordinating with the IT staff of all banks since Friday (Nov 6). Dian said OJK had written to bank boards of directors several times about cybersecurity, with the latest letter, sent the previous week, telling management to stay alert and take preventive steps.

Banks must watch significant or high-value transactions more closely and pause anomalous ones pending verification, Antara and The Star reported. Under existing digital resilience rules, lenders are already required to carry out penetration tests, cyberattack simulations and IT audits.

OJK and Bank Indonesia have also activated a joint cyber incident response team, according to Antara and Kontan. “We are concerned about this issue,” Dian told Kontan.

OJK advised the public to keep transacting as normal, follow their bank’s account security procedures, contact banks only through official channels and ignore speculative news. Antara noted the issue had been widely discussed on social media.

Attack attempts and reactions

Figures from cybersecurity firm Fortinet’s FortiGuard Labs threat map, cited by several outlets, showed attempted attacks on finance in the hundreds of thousands to more than a million within 24 hours, with totals varying by the time they were checked. The Star, citing Kompas, said attempts on banking, finance and insurance exceeded 1.2 million in 24 hours as of Monday evening, up from 657,000 over the weekend.

Antara, which checked the map at 3.02pm on Monday, said about 1.9 million attacks had been blocked in 24 hours, with finance, banking and insurance the most targeted sector at about 999,000. Antara noted the dashboard is a global map and does not state whether the figures are limited to Indonesia. Cybersecurity expert Alfons Tanujaya told CNN Indonesia the numbers count detected and blocked attempts, not systems actually breached.

Coordinating Minister for Economic Affairs Airlangga Hartarto urged every bank to strengthen its cybersecurity, saying hackers were testing systems in many countries, CNN Indonesia and The Star reported. Asked about coordination with OJK, he told CNN Indonesia there was no specific coordination yet.

Lani Darmawan, president director of PT Bank CIMB Niaga, told The Star the bank was monitoring the situation, applying new security patches as instructed by the regulator, and remained safe.

What’s next

None of the sources reviewed named an Indonesian bank that had been breached or reported customer losses. OJK has told the public to rely only on official bank channels, while its joint cyber incident response team with Bank Indonesia has been activated.

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