NEW DELHI: The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has bagged a top data security award for best practices in the government sector. Data Security Council of India (DSCI), a not-for-profit, industry body on data protection in India, setup by NASSCOM awarded UIDAI for its significant role in securing national critical ‘Aadhaar’ infrastructure that provides digital identity based welfare services to residents. The jury recognized the forward looking security strategy, good security practices for safeguarding residents’ demographic and biometric data and the proactive approach in addressing new age cyber security risks and threats through effective and efficient security governance and state of art security infrastructure deployment. This award is another feather in the cap for UIDAI, which takes pride to be the first Government Organization to be Privacy Certified on leading industry standard (ISO27701) and one of the leading government institutions that is ahead in innovation and incubation of indigenized technology implementation. The award was given in the just concluded three day ‘Annual Information Security Summit (AISS)’ of DSCI in New Delhi. Among over 270 nominations across five award categories, UIDAI was awarded by DCSI jury panel for ‘Best Security Practices in Government Sector’. Earlier in the Inaugural session of the summit, UIDAI CEO Dr. Saurabh Garg spoke extensively on the proactive outlook of UIDAI that has fuelled the fast paced adoption of digital public goods to drive the digital economy in the country. He highlighted how several economies are reaching out to UIDAI for consultation on digital identity programs, and leading role that India can play in guiding them through the Digital Public Goods. Dr. Garg invited start-ups and tech companies for collaboration, and do research on indigenized digital technology products with UIDAI. Source: PIB