Thailand
Indonesia: E-commerce platforms ‘under attack’, cybersecurity must be improved: Minister
Communication and Information Minister Johnny G. Plate has urged digital companies to improve their cybersecurity systems following recent reports of data breaches on Indonesia’s largest e-commerce platforms.
The minister said on Friday that Indonesia’s digital economy was “under attack” and that companies needed to routinely increase their investments into cybersecurity.
“There were large scale attacks on our digital industry recently. I’m asking all companies to maintain their security systems to protect their applications and overall business,” he said during online digital talent event Grab Ventures Velocity, held by ride-hailing giant Grab.
Indonesian e-commerce unicorn Tokopedia had its internal database breached by an unidentified party in March, resulting in a massive data leak of the personal information of more than 15 million users.
The full database – which includes the data of 91 million Tokopedia users – has now been put up for sale on the dark web for US$5,000 by a member of data-exchange platform Raid Forums, according to cybersecurity research collective Under the Breach.
Johnny said that cybersecurity had become even more important in recent days with e-commerce and financial technology usage spiking during the COVID-19 outbreak, as people avoid visiting physical stores.
“The digital economy will play a greater role due to the pandemic and Indonesians will rely heavily on the industry to fulfill their daily needs,” he said.
According to the ministry’s data, user traffic on online marketplaces has increased 30 percent, while e-wallet payment usage has jumped 100 percent since the pandemic struck Indonesia in early March.
Johnny said the ministry aimed to expedite the digitization of Indonesia’s 64 million-strong micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) to tap into the pandemic’s online boom.
“Currently, there are only 8 million MSMEs that are connected to online marketplaces. We want more small companies to migrate from offline to online stores,” he said.
The Grab Ventures Velocity initiative also puts MSME empowerment front and center, making it the main theme of this year’s startup talent development program.
The initiative is an annual 16-week mentoring program for digital startups chosen by Grab based on their performance and relevance to the theme.
“Initially, we proposed restaurant value-added services as the program’s theme for this year. However, we changed it to culinary MSMEs empowerment, as many of Indonesia’s food and beverage businesses have been affected by the pandemic,” Grab Indonesia’s managing director Neneng Goenadi said.
Five startups were chosen by the ride-hailing company to join the training program while also being granted network access to Grab’s 400,000 merchants.
Property cleaning service provider KliknClean, cloud accounting platform Luna POS, printing and packaging service provider Printerous, marketing and promotion platform GetCraft and human resources management application Workmate were selected by grab as this year’s finalists.
Source: https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2020/05/18/e-commerce-platforms-under-attack-cybersecurity-must-be-improved-minister.html