The Data Protection and Privacy (DPDP) Act, passed in the monsoon session in the Indian Parliament, represents a landmark legislation aimed at safeguarding individuals’ personal data and privacy rights in the digital age. Envisioned as a comprehensive framework, the DPDP Act addresses concerns surrounding data collection, processing, storage, and transfer by both government and private entities. With the proliferation of digital technologies and the increasing interconnectedness of our lives, the Act seeks to establish clear guidelines and mechanisms to ensure transparency, accountability, and consent in the handling of personal data.
Implementing the India Data Protection and Privacy (DPDP) Act faces several challenges that need to be addressed for its effective enforcement. One major issue is the complexity of regulating the vast and diverse digital landscape, including the sheer volume of data generated and processed daily. “The exponential growth in digital-first approach to customer experience has resulted in potential loopholes in ‘ data security’. Multiple ways of logging into your favorite travel website through a Mobile App or a website using OpenAuth (OAuth) standards opens up opportunities for hackers to exploit vulnerable systems. This makes it extremely important for large enterprises to invest heavily in adaptive maintenance that requires monitoring, troubleshooting and a quick turnaround in releasing security patches. With more frequent releases comes the challenge of automated test suites in CI/CD pipeline that provide a optimum test coverage. As you can see it will take a well-coordinated set of mature software practices that will come together to enable a effective implementation of this valuable act.
The implementation of the act requires us to work on managing ‘secure’ transmission, processing and storage of data. At the same time, another section of the act requires data fiduciaries to be able to have an audit trail that may require us to delete all data based on passengers requests. The happy path would be easier but the challenge could be in making sure there are right key-value pairs that can help connect the data elements.”
Bharat Kumar, Director of Software Engineering, Sabre
To read the rest of the article, click here.
This industry quote by Bharat Kumar was published on Data Quest.