Personal Data Protection And Data Localization: Rethinking Your Enterprise Multi-Cloud Strategy

- Nitin Mishra

In the wake of the Facebook – Cambridge Analytica data scandal in the US and the implementation of GDPR across Europe, the Government of India has been actively working towards bringing strong legislation that protects personal information. In this regard, the government has recently taken two giant steps:

In July, it submitted the draft ‘Personal Data Protection Bill, 2018’ to the Ministry of IT. The bill is intended to provide protection of data privacy and covers areas such as data collection, processing, storage, quality, accountability, portability, purpose, consent and Right to be Forgotten

It also proposed data localization in August – which means that personal critical user data of Indian citizen (or entities), as well as any data generated in India, should be stored and processed in India itself. This is intended to help investigative agencies access data easily, in case of breaches or illegalities.

These two steps are expected to have significant repercussions, not just for organizations and their IT departments, but also for companies that store, process and manage personal data – such as Cloud Service Providers (CSPs), MSPs, third-party data centers and hosting service providers.