Become DPDP Compliant by Protecting Personal Data with a Privacy Vault

The DPDP Act, introduced in 2022 and now with the draft rules released in January 2025, enforces strict penalties to ensure companies prioritize personal data security. It is a critical step toward safeguarding individual privacy, strengthening cybersecurity around personal data, and fostering responsible data governance in India’s rapidly growing digital economy.

But complying with such a comprehensive regulation will not be easy. 

Key Requirements: DPDP Rules

The DPDP Rules introduce strict obligations on businesses to ensure personal data privacy and security. 

Critical highlights include:

• Security-first approach: Rule 6 details that strong data security measures like encryption, obfuscation, masking, tokenization, and access control must be applied to protect personal data.
• Data breach accountability: According to rule 7, In the event of a breach, notifying affected individuals immediately and a detailed report to the Data Protection Board within 72 hours of a breach is mandatory.
• User-centric rights: In rule 13, all persons, called “Data Principals” in the DPDP, have the right to access, correct, and erase their personal data.
• Data residency requirements: In rule 14, data residency requirements are outlined, with the transfer of data outside of India subject to restrictions.
• Consent collection, enforcement, and revocation: Rule 3, 4 requires informed and verifiable user consent, as well as enforcement of consent collection, are required.
• Additional restrictions regarding personal data of children: Most notably, rules 10 and 11 mandate verifiable consent from a parent or legal guardian before processing data of children (ages 0-18).  

Personal Data Sprawl Creates Massive Challenges for DPDP Compliance

In most systems, personal data, like a phone number, gets copied multiple times with replicas distributed throughout the system. This makes complying with requirements like “right to erasure” and managing itemized consent nearly impossible to execute – how do you find and delete every copy of that phone number? How do you notify persons (data principals) in the case of a breach? How do you dynamically enforce consent and ensure no error?

Historically, companies have tried to apply different point solutions to address this problem, like adding encryption certain records, adding in a blanket of governance, hardening the security of the servers, maintaining security patches and restricting access, but this adds a lot of complexity to an already broken system – and it still does not satisfy all DPDP requirements.

Protecting PII and complying with the DPDP require a new way of thinking about data privacy and data protection. 

>> Watch: India's Data Protection Landscape: What DPDP Means For Your Business

The Case for Personal Data Protection With a Data Privacy Vault

1. Isolated and Protected Personal Data Reduces Risk

A data vault for PII discovers and transforms all sensitive personal data records. This reduces the risk of accidental exposure, data breaches, and unauthorized access—key concerns addressed by the DPDP. By isolating PII and treating it as a separate, highly protected class of data, organizations can apply stringent access controls, encryption, tokenisation, and monitoring mechanisms, ensuring compliance with the requirement to safeguard personal data.

2. Simplifies Data Subject Rights Management

The DPDP mandates enabling individuals to exercise rights such as access, rectification, erasure (the "right to be forgotten"), and data portability. When PII is protected with a data vault:

• Relevant data can be identified and retrieved quickly.
• Modifications, deletions, and exports can be executed with minimal operational overhead.
• Ensures compliance without significant disruptions to other business processes.

3. Enforces Consent and Purpose Limitation

Identifying and transforming PII with a data vault enables dynamic consent enforcement, a critical requirement under the DPDP.

• Granular Consent Management: Data vaults can store consent metadata alongside PII, including the scope of consent, purpose, and validity period. This makes it easy to enforce policies about when and how data can be used.
• Real-Time Consent Validation: Before accessing or processing PII, systems can reference the data vault to ensure consent is valid and the intended use aligns with the original purpose. This ensures that processing is always lawful and transparent.
• Consent Revocation: When individuals withdraw consent, the vault can immediately flag the relevant PII as restricted, halting further processing and ensuring compliance with data minimization and usage principles.
• Retroactive Consent: Getting consent retroactively for the data that was collected before DPDP was enacted. 

4. Facilitates Audits and Regulatory Reporting

A data vault provides a clear, auditable trail for data access, usage, and consent enforcement, which is essential for demonstrating compliance during audits.

• Consent and Governance Audits: Organizations can demonstrate that every use of PII aligns with valid consent.
• Access Logs: The vault captures a detailed record of who accessed the data, when, and for what purpose, ensuring transparency and accountability.

Data Privacy Vault: The Strategic Approach to DPDP Compliance

Protecting PII with a data privacy vault is a strategic approach to effortlessly meet DPDP requirements. By incorporating robust consent enforcement mechanisms, organizations can demonstrate compliance with purpose limitation, transparency, and user rights while also reducing operational complexity and enhancing data security. This approach not only ensures regulatory adherence but also fosters trust with customers and strengthens organizational resilience in a rapidly evolving privacy landscape.

Skyflow doesn’t just check the compliance box; it transforms the way you manage sensitive data. Our Data Privacy Vault gives you the confidence to innovate without compromising on privacy or security.

With a platform designed to evolve with changing regulations, Skyflow ensures you're not just prepared for today’s DPDP requirements but that you and your company are also future-ready.

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This article originally appeared on Express Computer.

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