The compliance crunch – Why cyber resilience must be rebuilt for India’s data-first future

By Balaji Rao, Area Vice President, India & SAARC

India’s digital economy runs on data, and the country has reached a stage where scale collides with scrutiny. Every retail payment, telemedicine consultation, and logistics update add to a national data store expanding at twice the pace of the overall economy. The Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act, 2023, has now redrawn the boundaries of accountability. Enterprises must be able to prove, at any moment, that every record is intact, sovereign, and recoverable without leakage.

The economic context underlines the stakes. India’s digital economy already contributes 11.74% of GDP (₹31.64 lakh crore) and will account for nearly one-fifth of national income according to 2029-30 projections. Data is both the engine and the infrastructure of this growth. The DPDP Act arrives at this stage of acceleration, making resilience and sovereignty issues of national competitiveness rather ...