FRIDAY, March 29, 2024
nationthailand

Legislation on way to boost data security

Legislation on way to boost data security

THE Ministry of Digital Economy and Society will submit a draft bill on data protection to the Cabinet with the aim of securing approval for the legislation by the end of this month.

If the draft bill clears the Cabinet, the resulting Data Protection Act would likely be unveiled to the public before the end of the year.
In related moves, the ministry also will set up a Data Protection Knowledge Centre as a resource to boost people’s data literacy.
Pichet Durongkaveroj, the Minister of Digital Economy and Society, said that if the draft bill gained approval, it would move on to the Council of State and the National Legislative Assembly as the next steps in the approval process.
The draft bill on data protection covers issues such as the ownership of data, the controls of over this information and data processing. The proposed legislation seeks to protect citizen’s data and their privacy. 
The ministry will also set up a committee and an advisory to |support the new law in the near future. He said the Data Protection Knowledge Centre would help underpin the broad thrust of data protection efforts in the country with its focus on education.
“I think that the new law will focus on protecting data for the benefit of people in Thailand,” Pichet said.
“It will also be of a standard to support international law. As such, it will create confidence for businesses and people related to data privacy.”

$212m spent in 2017 
According to Frost & Sullivan, IDC and Gartner, Thailand in 2017 spent US$212 million on cybersecurity and the outlays are expected to reach US$243 million in 2018. It is expected that Thailand’s cybersecurity spending in 2025 will climb to US$511 million, or 0.07 per cent of the country’s GDP. 
Over the next eight years, this spending is estimated to be US$23.3 billion, or 0.35 per cent of GDP. 
 

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