On 11 August 2023, the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (DPDPA), was officially signed into law by the President of India. As India’s first data protection law, it aims to empower individuals with data privacy rights and greater control and safeguards over their personal data by establishing a comprehensive framework for how India’s personal data is handled.
Expected to come into force later this year, this landmark legislation applies to both domestic and international organisations that handle Indian digital personal data - whether collected online or offline and digitised later. It requires them to meet a host of new compliance standards or face penalties, including hefty fines for failing to do so.
The Key Principles of DPDPA 2023
The key principles outlined in DPDPA 2023 for data handling include obtaining explicit consent, limiting data to specific purposes, ensuring data accuracy, implementing robust security measures, and promoting transparency and accountability in data practices.
To help businesses navigate the new standards, we have put together 5 key steps towards achieving and maintaining DPDPA compliance when it comes to security and promoting transparency and accountability in your data practices.
- Review your data security posture
The DPDPA underscores the critical importance of reviewing and strengthening your data security posture. With the new regulations mandating stringent measures for processing and safeguarding digital personal data, organisations must proactively assess their current security frameworks, addressing any existing gaps that could leave data vulnerable. It’s useful to ask questions like “Who has access to the personal data, and are access controls appropriately stringent?’, “What measures are in place to protect personal data from unauthorised access, alteration, and breaches?” and “Do we have secure, automated, and reliable backup solutions in place for data recovery?”
- Getting team buy-in around compliance
From a security standpoint, DPDPA compliance requires a coordinated effort across the organisation. Everyone, from employees to top management, must understand their role in data privacy. This involves implementing security measures like encryption, access controls, and regular audits. Continuous training and clear communication are crucial to fostering a culture of cyber security awareness. By making data privacy a shared responsibility, organisations can effectively safeguard personal data and maintain DPDPA compliance.
- Employing robust security safeguards
Aligning with the DPDPA’s requirements for robust security measures starts by ensuring you are deploying best-in-class solutions to enhance data protection, mitigate threats and ensure secure access to personal data.
A good data security strategy should ideally cover all bases when it comes to protecting data, and helping to defend against potential threats targeting your email, network, and applications. This, coupled with a Zero-Trust approach to security – ensuring that only authenticated and authorised users can access the data, can go a long way in reducing the risk of breaches.
As cyber threats continue to grow in complexity, investing in advanced threat protection technologies, including AI-powered defences can help to safeguard data against increasingly dangerous attacks like ransomware, phishing, and email impersonation, while solutions which provide data encryption and data loss prevention, can help to secure data across platforms.
- Planning for retention, recovery & breach notification
According to DPDPA guidelines, businesses must be transparent about their data practices and accountable for their data handling. Deploying secure, automated, and reliable backup solutions for both cloud and physical environments can ensure that data does not fall through the gaps and is easily retrievable in a worst-case scenario. Proper data retention and documentation are also vital for demonstrating compliance, so investing in a secure archiving solution can facilitate the storage and management of personal data, allowing for quick retrieval during audits and legal requests.
- Regularly Test & Validate Your Security
Regularly testing and validating the effectiveness of your data protection and privacy controls is essential to ensure you meet DPDPA compliance standards. This involves conducting frequent security audits and vulnerability assessments to identify and address potential weaknesses in your systems. Implementing penetration testing can simulate cyberattacks to evaluate your defences and improve incident response strategies. Additionally, keeping abreast of the latest security threats and updating your protocols accordingly is crucial. By continually validating your security measures, you not only ensure compliance but also enhance your overall resilience against data breaches and cyber threats.
