Customer data to be stored locally: Jabbar
The government will ensure that global digital companies store within Bangladesh data which have been provided and generated within the country’s borders, said Mustafa Jabbar, posts, telecommunications and information technology minister, yesterday.
Singapore is already doing so through the enactment of a data security act and Bangladesh will do the same, he said.
“When the new law comes into effect, they [global digital companies] will have to preserve local customers’ data in local data centres,” said Jabbar.
He said customer data were a high value product for digital companies and it needs to be secured.
Most social media platforms currently do not maintain any customer data protection system for the Bangladesh market and take local users’ data outside, which will be forbidden under the new law, he said.
Jabbar was addressing a seminar styled “Digital Bangladesh Digital Security” organised by the Department of Telecommunications at Bangabandhu International Conference Center.
Stating that the government also needs to consider strengthening the Digital Security Act enacted in 2018, he said, “In the current act, the highest penalty is only Tk 1 crore which is not enough for the digital crimes.”
“To bring control over the global digital companies we need to increase the penalty to billions of dollars.”
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