Indian Data Protection Bill/ Indian GDPR
Indian Personal data protection bill 2018 is on the way and this will cause havoc in any industry who process personal or special personal information of individuals. Technically speaking all businesses process these information in some or other way but some industries will take major toll due to abundant information they are keeping from ages.
This bill is expected to increase cost of production by 5%(atleast) due to stringent rules on collection , processing and storing of personal information. Data protection or data security in India will not be the same and every sector needs to restructure how they collect , process and store information of individuals .
Pressure is on government to set up data protection agency of state of India who will ensure compliance of Indian GDPR. So what is expected by a business . This data protection bill will change :- Yours business development approach
- Yours client support approach
- Yours Vendor management approach
- Handling of personal information of individuals
- Imposing data minimization on all business activities
- Rights of data subjects and how to handle that from sales/support representative level
- Time till you keep personal information of individuals
- How to handle Employee/contractor information
Unlike ISO or any other certification this is self compliance and one needs to ensure compliance is in place all the time which can happen only if there is huge change in the way we deal with personal information . So gone are the days when individual information is left as visiting cards on your desk or in some excel sheets . This information becomes precious now so should be dealt with seriousness .
On 24th December 2018 front page news of Times of India clearly shows how serious government is . Though that news was explaining requirement of only one section (section 40) of India Personal Data protection Bill but one must understand there are total 112 sections in Indian Data protection bill and most important part is that offence under this bill is non bailable and can cause imprisonment upto 3 years .
“As per Article 95. Offences by companies.—
(1)Where an offence under this Act has been committed by a company, every person who, at the time the offence was committed was in charge of, and was responsible to, the company for the conduct of the business of the company, as well as the company, shall be deemed to be guilty of the offence and shall be liable to be proceeded against and punished accordingly.
(2) Notwithstanding anything contained in sub-section (1), where an offence under this Act has been committed by a company and it is proved that the offence has been committed with the consent or connivance of, or is attributable to any neglect on the part of, any director, manager, secretary or other officer of the company, such director, manager, secretary or other officer shall also be deemed to be guilty of the offence and shall be liable to be proceeded against and punished accordingly.”
So it is high time to get started with compliance as this will not happen overnight and like demonetization and GST this will hit any day . Worse part of the Bill is penalty of 15 Crores or 4% of global turnover in case of non compliance.
Do get in touch if you wish to ensure your company does not get caught off guard by authorities.