Failure to recognize the necessity of robust physical and cybersecurity measures can result in a data center becoming susceptible to attacks and breaches. The recent ransomware attack on the national data center (PDN) in Surabaya, East Java, illustrates the necessity of considering redundancy and disaster recovery.

Inadequate planning for redundancy and disaster recovery can result in significant periods of downtime during failures or disasters. It is therefore essential to have a comprehensive backup and recovery strategy.

The role of PDN service providers is currently under scrutiny following the cyberattack on the Surabaya center that resulted in the disruption of immigration services, among other consequences.

The government’s procurement of PDNs through an auction shows that this system still has many gaps and ultimately has the potential to cause big problems in the future.

The PDN project-based procurement system has resulted in a gap at the level of service agreements with vendors such as data leaks, data encryption by ransomware and an unreliable system. The government should have had a multilayered backup system that could be activated at any time, immediately upon any disruption to the main PDN.

The provision of cloud services or cloud computing for storing temporary PDN data should be managed professionally and apply the rules of business continuity and recovery when an incident occurs. Cloud services should be provided by independent, professional parties and it is recommended that local providers provide a clear service-level agreement (SLA).