New data Bill draft to allow storage in trusted nations

Bengaluru | New Delhi: The government will allow transfer of data and its storage in “trusted geographies” in the revised draft of the data protection Bill, doing away with the data localisation requirement proposed in the earlier version, people privy to the matter told ET. The government will define which geographies are “trusted” from time to time.

Criminal penalties proposed on staff of companies involved in data breach also will be scrapped in the new draft, which is likely to be released for public consultation this week. Instead, financial penalties of as much as Rs 200 crore, multiplied by the number of users impacted, will be imposed per breach, an official said. A Data Protection Board will be set up to “adjudicate the consequences of any data breaches”, this official added.