Parliamentary Committee Suggests Slew of Measures for Cyber Security

The report said that India should have a sound consumer privacy and data protection law along with a federal body to tackle cyber crime.

A series of recommendations have been made to the government by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance, headed by  M. Veerappa Moily, to bring in legislation on data privacy and to form a federal body to tackle cyber attacks, in a report titled ‘Transformation Towards A Digital Economy.’

“The country now urgently needs a data minimisation, data privacy and data residency law to ensure security of public and private data,” the report said. “The Committee would, therefore, urge upon the government to bring such a data protection legislation before Parliament at the earliest.” The report said that India should have a sound consumer privacy and data protection law “lest we become a digital colony with global entities having virtual control over data”. The committee said it found “rather disconcerting” that even as the country moves towards a digital economy, transactional hassles and grievances of users, including ATM card frauds like cloning, have been greatly on the rise.




The draft report also said that the proposed federal authority to tackle cyber attacks should be at par with the Space and Atomic Energy departments. The new body, which will develop “comprehensive security standards, technical guidance roadmap and institutionalise a comprehensive risk management framework”, should have an adequate budget to undertake the complex and challenging task.

A part of this job is currently performed by the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), an office within the ministry of electronics and information technology. It is the nodal agency to deal with cyber security threats.