Indonesia’s financial regulator has told banks to tighten security amid a wave of cyberattacks.

Indonesian banks, finance firms and insurers faced more than 1.2 million attempts in 24 hours, The Jakarta Post reported.

In response, the Financial Services Authority (OJK) has sent banks letters with technical steps.

Banks should watch significant transactions more closely. Any that look unusual are to be paused and checked.

Dian Ediana Rae heads banking oversight at OJK. He told the Post that the regulator’s IT supervisors were working with banks’ technology teams.

Earlier, he had urged bank management to stay alert and take preventive steps as attacks rose.

Under digital resilience rules, he noted, banks must run regular penetration tests, attack simulations and IT audits.

OJK and Bank Indonesia (BI) have both activated incident response teams.

The report cited FortiGuard Labs, part of US security firm Fortinet, for these figures.

Technology firms came second with 434,000 attempts. Government was third with 163,000.

Kompas, also cited by the Post, had earlier counted about 657,000 attacks across Indonesia in one day.

That reading came from the same FortiGuard dashboard, with 262,000 aimed at banking, finance and insurance.

Kaspersky ranked the country the world’s 32nd most attacked, the Post added.

Dian called on the public to stay calm and continue banking as usual. Customers should follow their bank’s security rules and use official channels only, he said. He advised them to ignore unverified reports.

Lani Darmawan, who leads CIMB Niaga, told the newspaper that the bank was monitoring the situation.

She said it had issued new security patches as the regulator had instructed.

Featured image: Edited by Fintech News Indonesia, based on image by OJK via its website and Magnific.