Just a couple of month in the past, Rescurity, an American cyber safety agency, stated that non-public info of 815 million Indians was being bought on the darkish net. This included particulars comparable to Aadhar numbers and passport particulars. The individuals promoting this info claimed that it was from the Indian Council of Medical Research or ICMR, the nation’s premier scientific analysis physique. This shouldn’t be the primary time ICMR has been topic a cyber assault – 6,000 such makes an attempt had been reported simply final yr. The All India Institute of Medical Sciences – AIIMS in Delhi has additionally been hit by cyber assaults – in a single ransomware case, the hackers took over the servers, encrypted the info, and made it unattainable for the hospital to entry its personal methods.

Health information consists of delicate, private info and as soon as stolen, can improve the danger of digital id theft, on-line banking thefts, tax frauds and different monetary crimes. India was ranked fourth internationally in all malware detection within the first of 2023, as per a survey from Resucurity.

Even as this is happening, the Central authorities launched an bold Ayushman Bharat Digital Initiative in 2021. During the Covid-19 pandemic, our Aadhar and different particulars had been used for each testing and vaccination providers.

So how protected is our well being information with the federal government or non-public well being organisations? How properly does the Data Protection Act, that got here into power this yr shield this delicate info? Is our proper to privateness over our private info being adequately safeguarded in India?

Guest: Shivangi Rai, Deputy Coordinator at Centre for Health Equity, Law and Policy, Indian Law Society, Pune

Host: Zubeda Hamid

Edited by Sharmada Venkatasubramanian.

Listen to extra In Focus podcasts: