India’s privacy reality check: Rising stress, shrinking teams, and the AI imperative

India’s digital economy is growing at an unprecedented pace — powered by fintech, healthtech, e-commerce and AI-led platforms that thrive on data. Yet as organisations innovate, the people responsible for protecting personal data are increasingly stretched thin.

ISACA’s latest State of Privacy 2026 survey highlights that 55% of privacy professionals in India say their roles are more stressful today than five years ago. Shrinking teams, compliance complexity, and rapid AI adoption are compounding the pressure. As India transitions from intent to enforcement under the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act, execution maturity is now the defining factor.

To better understand what these trends mean for Indian enterprises, we spoke to Chetan Anand, ISACA Global Mentor and Emerging Trends Working Group Member. “The statistics suggests a correlation between resources and on-the-job stress. The stress is attributed to the technology’s rapid evolution, compliance challenges, resource shortages and ...