The IT firms today are playing on Big Data an they should prevent their data from data theft, from User information like E-mail Ids, passwords,credit card number or may be any other sensitive data in your system for personal use or may be for business plans are all sensitive data and unauthorized access by your employees can create business problems and may be loss of reputation.The loss of information by a person who accesses your company data is covered under Data Theft In a recent case of a call center where an employee stole the sensitive data of the customers and later they misused the data by impersonating as company employees and defrauding the customers in the name of original entity company, thereby that BPO lost all the sensitive data and reputation.
Here is the solution to this issue, if you have proof that your employee is stealing data you may move appropriate authority under the IT Act 2000, specifically empowered to resolve data theft issues-:
For adjudicating of the dispute under the Information Technology Act, Section 46 was enacted which has given the power for adjudication of the crimes. The power has been given to the Secretary, Information Technology and he has power to adjudge the quantum of compensation under Sections 46 and 47 of the Act.
Now Section 43 of the IT ACT is for your rescue
Penalty for damage to computer to computer, computer system etc.- If the person without permission of the owner or any other person who is in charge of a computer, computer system or computer network- (a) Accesses or secures access to such computer, computer system or computer network;
(b) Downloads, copies or extracts any data, computer date-base or information from such computer, computer system or computer network including information or data held or stored in any removable storage medium;
(c) Introduces or causes to be introduced any computer contaminant or computer virus into any computer, computer system or computer network;
(d) damages or causes to be damaged any computer, computer system or computer network, data computer data base or any other programmes residing in such computer, computer system or computer network; (e) disrupts or causes disruption of any computer, computer system or computer network;
(f) denies or causes the denial of access to any person authorized to access any computer, computer system or computer network by any means
; (g) provides any assistance to any person to facilitate access to a computer, computer system or computer network in contravention of the provisions of this Act. Rules or Regulations made hereunder;
(h) charges the services availed of by a person to the account of another person by tampering with or manipulating any computer, computer system or computer network. He shall be liable to pay damages by way of compensation not exceeding one crore rupees to the person so affected. Explanation.-For the purposes of this section-
(i)“computer contaminant” means any set of computer instructions that are designed- (ii)to modify, destroy, record, transmit data or programme residing within a computer system or computer network; by any means to usurp the normal operation of the computer, computer system or computer network; (ii) “computer data-base” means a representation of information knowledge, facts, concepts or instructions in text, image, audio, \ video that are being prepared or have been prepared or have been prepared in a formalized manner or have been produced by a computer, computer system or system or computer network and are intended for use in a computer, computer system or computer network. (iii) “Computer virus” means any computer instruction; information, data or programme that destroys, damages degrades or adversely affects the performance of a computer. (iv) “damage” means to destroy, alter, delete, add, modify or rearrange any computer resource by any means.
Now section 43 covers wide range of data thefts and also covers the amount of penalty and compensation maximum 1 crore under the act.
However under S., 61 civil remedy is barred and therefore one can take a recourse of IT act to get compensation on Data Theft.
Adv Nitish Banka
Supreme Court of India
