Data protection and cyber security

The increasing need for cyber security is opening up investment opportunities

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On August 11, 2023, the Gazette of India published ‘The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023’. It described the Act as “an Act to provide for the processing of digital personal data in a manner that recognises both the right of individuals to protect their personal data and the need to process such personal data for lawful purposes and for matters connected therewith or incidental thereto.” While the purpose of the Act addresses the lawful use of personal data, it also brings into focus the need for corporations, and indeed any data repository, to protect itself against cyber crimes.

IBM regularly publishes a report titled ‘Cost of a Data Breach Report’. The 2023 edition of the report studied data breaches at 553 organisations spread across 16 countries in the 12 months ending March 2023. The report states, “The average cost of a data breach reached an all-time high of $4.45 million in 2023. This represents a 2.3 per cent increase from the 2022 cost of $4.35 million. Taking a long-term view, the average cost has increased 15.3 per cent from $3.86 million in the 2020 report”.

Increased usage of mobile and online transactions and usage of cloud services are only going to add to the pace of attacks and the cost of mitigation.

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