

RBI action on Kotak Mahindra Bank: Is your data in other banks safe?
Reserve Bank of India (RBI) directed Kotak Mahindra Bank Limited (KMBL) to cease with immediate effect from onboarding new customers through online and mobile banking channels and issuing fresh credit cards. The reason given by the RBI for such an action is because serious deficiencies and non-compliances in certain specified areas were observed.
«As per the RBI press release, the action against Kotak Mahindra Bank may have been taken more around the information technology security aspects,» says Ashok Hariharan, Co-Founder and CEO, of IDfy, an identity verification company.
What did the RBI say about the handling of customer's banking data by Kotak Mahindra Bank?
As per the RBI's press release, serious deficiencies and non-compliances were observed in the areas of IT inventory management, user access management, vendor risk management, data security, data leak prevention strategy, business continuity and disaster recovery rigour and drill, etc.
How do the top 10 banks in India handle customer data?
Banks deal with sensitive personal data of account holders and need to ensure their privacy and safety. «As per the Information Technology Act and Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, (DPDP) Banks and other financial institutions have to make sure that the data of the customer is used in the right way, the data is being stored using a particular security standard, the way you use the data and the way the data is stored needs to follow certain standards,» says Hariharan.
However, as per a recent report by IDfy