BPO industry must address privacy concerns: Study

To sustain its booming growth, the Indian Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry needs to priorities addressing data security and privacy concerns of their stakeholders, a study has concluded.

The study by professional services firm KPMG and Data Security Council of India (DSCI) says that despite the maturity of the Indian BPO industry, most organisations treat security as a ?hygiene factor?, rather than a factor to gain competitive advantage.

It was also found that Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) of majority of the organisations were spending significant time on strategic initiatives like identifying the security implications of new business initiatives and moving away from operational tasks.

The survey, conducted on 50 organisations, found that only 44 per cent of the respondents were fixing a liability on third party vendors to report new threats and vulnerabilities in their products and services.

The Indian BPO industry has grown nine times from USD 1.6 billion to USD 14.7 billion in just a decade and is expected to witness robust growth in years to come, the study said.

By 2020, Indian outsourcing industry (IT and BPO) which is currently at USD 60 billion is expected to reach USD 225 billion.

The survey was conducted to assess current state of data security and privacy practices being adopted by the Indian BPO industry and to gain insights into how the Indian BPO industry is addressing clients concerns.