Parliamentary Panel Questions Apple, Flipkart, Paytm & Banks On Data Security

SUMMARY

The panel summoned the businesses on July 1 for the meeting on Tuesday (July 4)

Senior executives of Paytm, Flipkart, Apple, Punjab National Bank, Bank of India were summoned by the panel

The panel was headed by former Minister of State for Finance, Jayant Sinha

A Parliamentary panel, reportedly held a meeting with companies including Apple, Paytm, Flipkart and banks to know about the data safety of their customers.

The issues related to cybercrime were investigated by a Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance, chaired by former Minister of State for Finance, Jayant Sinha. For the same, it also involved the senior executives of Paytm, Flipkart, Apple, Punjab National Bank, Bank of India in Parliament on Tuesday (July 4).

According to an Economic Times report, in the first round of the meeting, the banks informed the panel about the safety measures adopted by them to secure the customers’ data. The report stated that, though cyber crimes have seen a rise in recent times, the banks have been able to control such crimes through the stringent safety measures employed by them.

During the second round, the ecommerce businesses along with Apple were asked about the necessary measures that they took to secure customer data. In addition, the companies were also asked whether they are taking safety measures to control data breach and in such cases how do they compensate.

The companies were summoned by the panel on July 1. Even earlier in June, the panel held a meeting with fintech businesses Razorpay, PhonePe and CRED and quantum computing startup QNu Labs to have a similar discussion. Also, industry body NASSCOM was a part of the deliberations.

Earlier this year, MoS Rajeev Chandrasekhar informed the Parliament that India witnessed 13.91 Lakh cyber attacks in 2022.

In addition, road and transport minister Nitin Gadkari also expressed concerns that even the EV charging stations could be potential risk points of data breach and cyber attacks.

Indian governments at both state and national levels are proactively working to curb the rising cases of cyber attacks.

In April this year, Telangana’s Cyberabad Police busted a data theft gang which allegedly had data of about 669 Mn user accounts from 24 states and eight metropolitan cities. Police informed that the gang possessed data of several Indian tech startups, including BYJU’S, Vedantu, Paytm, PhonePe, Zomato, Policybazaar, CRED, BigBasket and Upstox.