IT cos offer compliance as a service to meet data rules

DPDP Act is set to influence data storage practices as firms grapple with compliance costs

- Sakshi Sadashiv

Top Indian data service providers increasingly offer compliance as a service (CaaS) model, capitalising on policy changes surrounding data localisation.

Compliance as a Service (CaaS) for data refers to a model where third-party service providers ensure that a company adheres to Indian data regulations and compliance requirements.

While the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act, 2023, does not mandate strict data localisation, it is expected to significantly influence the landscape as data and metadata within India continue to grow. Industry service providers anticipate that data localisation requirements will gain momentum, driven by increasing privacy, security and national interest concerns.

The DPDP Act rules are expected to be notified later this year. This follows the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) directive in 2018, which mandated that all banks store data within India.

"We are championing data sovereignty and are clearly ahead of the game, ensuring that the entire data framework and data mesh architecture enable the metadata to reside within the country," Neelakantan Venkataraman, vice president and global head of Cloud and Edge Business at Tata Communications, said.