Rules On Telecom Data Privacy, Security & Ownership In Two Weeks: RS Sharma

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) is aggressively working on the ‘privacy, security and ownership of telecom data’ norms which are expected to be released within a fortnight, a top official said.

“We are actively preparing a framework on the data ownership, privacy and security, and coming out with it in next couple of weeks,” said RS Sharma, chairman, TRAI.

Sharma, however, declined to provide insights into the broad contours of the upcoming regulation, but added that the customers’ data in digital space was highly critical while coming out with such guidelines.

In August 2017, the telecom regulator has come out with a consultation paper on ‘privacy, security and ownership of data in the telecom sector’ and sought comments from stakeholders initially by September 8, 2017 and later extended the deadline twice and fixed November 6, for comments and November 21 2017 for counter comments.

“There is a large amount of data in telecom space being generated by both— devices and SIM, and how that data is essentially being handled by stakeholders is an important area since it is consumers’ data,” Trai’s top official said.

Meantime, in March this year, a Facebook expose revealed that 87 million social profiles were harvested for a UK-based consulting firm Cambridge Analytica in a major data scandal, allowing the Indian government to act swiftly to bring in norms to prevent such misuse.

Ownership, privacy and security of data is of paramount importance and we dealt with it deliberately in the consultation process, Sharma added. – News Tread