As mentioned in a prior post on this blog, earlier this year the Indian Ministry of Communications and Information Technology issued new privacy and data security rules under the Information Technology (Reasonable security practices and procedures and sensitive personal data or information) Rules, 2011 (the “Privacy Rules”). The strict consent requirements relating to the collection and sharing of sensitive personal data or information seemed to threaten the viability of India’s successful outsourcing industry and affect the data collection practices of non-Indian companies who are otherwise in compliance with data security and privacy requirements in their home jurisdictions. On August 24, 2011, the Ministry issued a release clarifying certain aspects of the Privacy Rules which will undoubtedly cause the Indian outsourcing industry and non-Indian companies to breathe a sigh of relief.

India recently adopted a privacy and data security regulatory regime that fills the previous void of any such regulation with requirements that may force companies with operations in India and companies that outsource certain functions to Indian service providers to change the way they operate in order to comply. Visit our blog to see Proskauer attorney Paresh Trivedi’s article on the new Indian privacy rules.