About 70% C-suite leaders view the Personal Data Protection Bill as an opportunity to build trust, according to the EY Data Privacy Survey, which obtained responses from 150 C-suite leaders across healthcare, retail, IT/ITes, BFSI and manufacturing sectors.

While nearly two-thirds of the people are concerned about their personal data being handled by social media companies and the government, about 93% enterprises are prioritising privacy in their digital transformation journey, according to the survey.

“With the changing privacy ecosystem and magnified use of personal data, there is a much greater need to educate the consumers and make them privacy-aware. Therefore, it is imperative for organisations to lay greater emphasis on responsible management of personal data, maintain transparency and build strong privacy governance programmes,” said Murali Rao, cybersecurity and privacy leader, EY India.

Rohan Sachdev, India consulting leader at EY, said, “As Indian citizens become more privacy aware, India Inc too must play a greater role in developing a robust national privacy ecosystem that is built on citizen trust and helps India compete in a global landscape. A multi-function taskforce with diverse skills can play a crucial role in building a data privacy strategy and privacy-conscious culture in the organisation.”

Key Findings:

• 80% view privacy as a mere prerequisite for regulatory compliance
• 72% are concerned about their personal data being handled by social media companies and the government
• 93% enterprises are prioritising privacy in their digital transformation journey

Data privacy is key: Without active participation from business, assessing privacy risks as part of an overall risk programme and sustaining privacy efforts will not be successful.

• 80% respondents said there is no participation from the business in an organisation’s data privacy agenda.
• 56% cited lack of skills and inadequate awareness as the two major hindrances, restricting businesses from prioritising data privacy.
• 75% said lack of skilled resources and unaware employees are the biggest barriers to their privacy programmes.
• 50% said that while media plays a key role in enhancing awareness on privacy, firms also need to invest in skill enhancement and sensitising their employees and consumers about the importance of data privacy.

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