Data protection and security measures in digital economy

Abstract

We live in an age of innovation and entrepreneurship that is fuelled by data and huge information derived from data. How a firm uses its data can become the differentiating factor between failure and success, creating a sustainable competitive advantage over other firms in the industry. With modern technology being introduced frequently, traditional or existing privacy policies may not be sufficient to handle data protection issues that crop up. Methodology: 1. This study looks at existing and upcoming regulations in other countries especially the Eurozone and United States as a comparison and reference. 2. The current situation in India and the existing laws that govern data protection issues in different industries are analysed with specific examples from Financial Services, Telecom and Healthcare sectors. 3. The privacy policies of Airtel Payments Bank, SBI, HDFC, Mastercard (Financial Services) and Airtel Telecom have been analysed to understand the protection offered to existing customers in India. 4. An interview was conducted with an up and coming startup, Airim, that creates chatbots for businesses and is aiming to revolutionise the way businesses communicate with their customers. With data collection and processing being the critical component of creating chatbots, their industry perspective was obtained to draw significant insights on how regulations currently influence their business model and what their expectation of future trends are. 5. A white paper on ‘Data Protection in India 2017’ published by the Government of India in December 2017 was studied to understand the legal aspects of the regulations. (Panel, Dec 2017).