Jakarta (ANTARA) - The biometric (fingerprint and facial) data of Indonesian passport holders is safe and there has been no leakage of information from the immigration database, a government official said.

Director General of Immigration at Indonesia's Law and Human Rights Ministry Silmy Karim conveyed this in a statement released on Wednesday.

Teams from the Immigration Information System and Technology (SISTIK) Directorate and Immigration Intelligence Directorate, in coordination with the Communication and Informatics Ministry (Kemenkominfo) and the National Cyber and Crypto Agency (BSSN), conducted an investigation following rumors of an alleged passport data leak.

"The temporary investigation results show that there is no Indonesian passport biometric data that is leaked. The passport biometric data and passport application supporting data are all safe," he said.

Karim's statement came in response to rumors circulating on social media that the passport data of 34 million Indonesian citizens had been allegedly leaked and traded.

The alleged leaked data is text data. The structure of the data is not the one currently used by the Immigration Directorate General, he clarified.

"The Immigration Directorate General is implementing ISO 270001-2022. The ISO certificate will be issued in July 2023. The directorate general continues to improve the data security that it owns," Karim said.

ISO 270001-2022 is an information safety management system standard that provides a compliance requirements list that can be certified by organizations and professionals.

The ISO standard helps organizations develop, implement, maintain, and improve the information safety management system (ISMS), he said.

Indonesian citizens' passport data is stored with the Communication and Informatics Ministry's National Data Center (PDN). The Immigration Directorate General is coordinating with Kemenkominfo and BSSN to maintain and improve the security of the immigration database.

Therefore, Karim urged Indonesians to not be concerned about providing personal data for the purpose of passport creation.

"The people do not need to worry, especially if they want to apply for a passport and upload their personal data for that purpose," he said.

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Translator: Fath Putra M, Fadhli Ruhman
Editor: Rahmad Nasution
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