Policy and Infrastructure for Data Privacy and Data Protection in South Indian States: Issues and Prospects

In the 21st century, data privacy, data protection and cybersecurity have become challenging issues with increasing cases of data breaches and data disasters. Data privacy has emerged as one of the challenging issues after numerous cases of data breaches and manipulations in many departments, agencies, bodies and organisations in every country. A well-designed data framework may enable not just secure data privacy/protection but also enable users’ control over data through a protective and safe system to share data across organisations, leading to individual empowerment and well-being. In India, privacy still remains a complex area, which has affected data safety and protection. A number of government websites clearly mention that data will not be shared with anyone until and unless for the purpose enshrined so far. In India, there have been various policies, guidelines, strategies and initiatives for cybersecurity, data privacy, data protection and data measures, including the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023; the National Cyber Security Policy, 2013; the Information Technology Act 2000; the Information Technology (Amendment) Act, 2008; the Information Technology Rules, 2011 and so on. This article tries to examine policies/regulations for data privacy, data protection and data safety in South Indian states.