Global internet infrastructure, Cloudflare experienced an internal disruption on Tuesday (18/11/2025) which caused a number of websites and platforms to be inaccessible or down around the world including Indonesia. The loss is estimated at USD15 billion.
Some widely used sites were unusable such as X, ChatGPT, Canva, and Turboscribe. The same applies to BMKG's domestic website and some news portals.
According to data from SupportMy.website, a leading website maintenance service, the global economic loss due to Cloudflare's downtime is estimated to be between US$5 billion and US$15 billion for every one hour of downtime.
Moreover, the system disruption occurred in hundreds of countries around the world that access sites that use Cloudflare services. The highest losses were contributed from countries in the world that are still entering productive working hours such as the United States and Europe. As for Indonesia, this disruption occurred around 18.00 WIB on Tuesday and only subsided around dawn on Wednesday (11/19/2025).
Some of the services affected by Cloudflare's disruption are X, formerly known as Twitter, Canva and ChatGPT. Cloudflare immediately responded on their status page: "We are investigating an issue that impacts multiple customers: Widespread 500 errors, Dashboard and API also failing."
Until this news was revealed, there was no official statement released by Cloudflare regarding this incident.
US technology company Cloudflare, which acts as a critical internet infrastructure, experienced an unidentified technical problem on Tuesday (18/11) local time, which triggered a spike in the "500 Internal Server Error" error status in many digital services around the world that use the internet such as social media, to a number of AI applications.
In its statement, Cloudflare provides a number of digital services such as strengthening security, protecting sites from DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks, malicious bots, and hackers. Cloudflare has a system that can detect and block threats in real-time.
Risk mitigation
Chairman of Indonesia Fintech Society (Ifsoc) Rudiantara said that Cloudflare's infrastructure disruption reveals how vulnerable the world's digital infrastructure system is, including Indonesia. One company's disruption can affect millions of people around the world.
He added, to prevent greater risks due to Cloudflare disruption, it is necessary to strengthen the digital website system. Strengthening the digital website system can be done by maintenance and optimization.
Companies or institutions can use tools to monitor server performance and get notifications when there are problems or downtime, do regular website data backups to restore data in the event of an incident.
"Check and upgrade server specifications regularly so that they can handle increased traffic without experiencing performance problems," he told SUAR in Jakarta (11/19/2025).
Read also:
Benedictus Krisna Yogatama
Cyber Security Observer Ardi Sutedja said data security systems are important to prevent the risk of server disruptions in addition to protecting personal, financial, and confidential business information from threats such as hacking, identity theft, and fraud.
Ensure that personal data does not fall into the wrong hands and is misused by irresponsible parties.
"Many countries have data protection laws such as the PDP Law in Indonesia that require organizations to protect sensitive data," he told SUAR in Jakarta (19/11/2025).
Online gambling
Responding to the Cloudflare issue, the Ministry of Communication and Digital (Komdigi) asked Cloudflare to register as an Electronic System Operator (PSE). Because, in Komdigi's search, most of the online gambling sites handled use Cloudflare infrastructure.
Based on 10,000 sampling data of online gambling sites handled in the period of November 1-2, 2025, more than 76 percent of them used Cloudflare services, including for IP address masking and accelerating domain moves to avoid content blocking.
"PSE registration is not only administrative, but an important instrument to ensure Indonesia's digital sovereignty and protect the public in a healthy and responsible digital ecosystem. Without a legal PSE status, coordination and enforcement against prohibited content such as judol becomes more difficult," explained the Director General of Digital Space Supervision, Alexander Sabar, in Jakarta, Wednesday (19/11/2025).
According to DG Alexander, the findings regarding the high number of IPs of online gambling sites behind the Cloudflare service have been submitted to the company. Komdigi has also called Cloudflare to provide clarification and ask for a commitment to immediately register as a Private Scope Electronic System Operator (PSE).
"If a platform ignores the notification and still does not register, then administrative sanctions up to termination of access can be applied in accordance with statutory provisions," he said.
Cloudflare is currently included in a list of 25 global platforms that are required to immediately take care of PSE registration. Komdigi said that the enforcement measures are proportionate, given that many public and commercial services rely on Cloudflare's infrastructure.
This step refers to Law No. 11/2008 on Electronic Information and Transactions which gives the government the authority to cut off access to information with prohibited content, as well as Government Regulation No. 71/2019 on the Implementation of Electronic Systems and Transactions (Article 96) and Minister of Communication and Information Regulation No. 5/2020 on Private Scope Electronic System Operators which requires every electronic system operator to comply with Indonesian law.
Komdigi emphasized that the collaboration space is always open for global platforms as long as they show good faith in compliance and protection of the digital community.
"We are open and always ready for cooperation, but compliance with regulations and laws remains a red line. Keeping Indonesia's digital space clean and safe is a shared responsibility," he concluded.