The recent WhatsApp data breach brought about the vulnerabilities of consumer apps and solutions to the fore, yet again. Data leaks and breaches are possible in every app, especially consumer apps. Popular messaging apps such as WhatsApp, which are used by hundreds of millions of users, are popular target for hackers. Apps with a smaller use base are seldom targeted by hackers, though they are equally vulnerable.
Technically, a 100 per cent secure messaging app is a myth. With data passing through both the apps’ and telecom service providers’ enterprise networks, there exist multiple opportunities with varying degrees of security to tap in and access data. The production of data in 2020 is expected to be 44 times as it was in 2019, and over 70 per cent of digital data is expected to be generated by individual users — the remaining 30 by enterprises. Over one-third of data is expected to be hosted on the cloud in 2020. All this require robust security protocols at all levels, devices and platforms.
The Indian government at a policy and regulatory level is taking steps to safeguard its citizens’ rights and their digital data. The draft Data Protection Bill 2018 submitted by a 10-member committee to the government on July 27, 2018, is a great start in the right direction towards data privacy and regulation in India.
In India, such targeted data breaches and attacks are rare and unprecedented. Other countries such as South Korea, Japan and China have penalties for companies (mostly in financial sector) that are not able to protect their users’ data. Countries such as the United States and China regularly prosecute and convict individual hackers for data breaches. However, there have not been any successful cases of companies being prosecuted for releasing spyware on targeted individuals, as in the case of the current WhatsApp data leaks of specific citizens by the Israeli company NSO Group’s spyware called Pegasus.
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