India: Adopted cybersecurity requirements in Companies (Accounts) Rules 2014

On 31 March 2014, the Ministry of Corporate Affairs adopted the Companies (Accounts) Rules 2014, outlining cybersecurity measures for data on the “books of account”. In particular, the Rules state that data related to “books of account” and documents containing relevant information related to them should be stored in the original format and that the electronic records should be “complete and unaltered”. Furthermore, the under the Rules, the entities are required to implement security measures to ensure that their system for storage is “proper”. The entities that store their data on a cloud will have to provide the provider’s address in the financial statements. The Rules will be implemented on 1 April 2014.