# India DPDP Act 2023 SE-004 — Personal Data Backup & Recovery

- Source: https://support.icompaas.com/compliance/india-dpdp-act-2023/se-004-personal-data-backup-recovery
- Section: [Compliance](https://support.icompaas.com/compliance) › [Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (India)](https://support.icompaas.com/compliance/india-dpdp-act-2023) › Security (SE)
- Last updated: 2026-06-05
- Publisher: iCompaas, Inc. (https://www.icompaas.com)

**India DPDP Act 2023**·Control `SE-004`·high·Component: **Security**

## What this control requires

> Maintain regular backups of all personal data systems. Test backup restoration quarterly. Ensure backup storage is encrypted and access-controlled. Document RTO and RPO for all personal data systems. Objective: Ensure availability and recovery of personal data following a security incident, breach, or system failure.
> 
> — India DPDP Act 2023, Control SE-004

### In plain English

Maintain regular backups of all personal data systems. In practice, this means you can prove you maintain personal data backup-level controls on a defined cadence.

## Why it matters

Penalties under the DPDP Act reach ₹250 crore per instance of significant non-compliance, and the Act applies extra-territorially to any entity processing personal data of individuals in India in connection with offering goods or services.

This control is rated **high**. Auditors expect a named owner, a remediation SLA, and a tooling artefact that evidences continuous operation.

## What an auditor looks for

Indian DPAs and statutory auditors will look for: documented consent capture and revocation flows, a designated Data Protection Officer (for Significant Data Fiduciaries), breach-notification workflows tied to Data Protection Board notification timelines, and Records of Processing that match the consent notice the user saw.

Within **Security**, the assessor will trace your implementation back to the catalogue reference (Control SE-004) and look for objective evidence on the latest two assessment cycles.

## How to implement

#### Business Continuity

**BC/DR.** Define RTO/RPO per service, test backup restoration quarterly, and run a tabletop of full-region failover annually.

**Backups.** Immutable backups (S3 Object Lock / Azure immutable storage / GCS bucket lock) plus an air-gapped copy for ransomware resilience.

### Operational checklist

-   **Maintain.** Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
-   **Document.** Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
-   **Ensure.** Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
-   **Scope:** personal data backup, recovery.

## Evidence to collect

-   **Infra Scan.** Continuous infrastructure-posture telemetry — AWS Config, Azure Policy compliance, GCP Organisation Policy, Wiz / Prisma findings.
-   **Policy Document.** A signed and version-controlled policy / standard / procedure document.

Signed policies, procedures, and registers document the safeguard. Infrastructure posture tooling (AWS/Azure/GCP configuration, encryption, backup, logging) verifies technical enforcement. Focus: Personal Data Backup & Recovery.

## Common pitfalls

-   DR plans that have never been tested in earnest, or that depend on an MFA token only one person can produce.

## How it maps to other frameworks

Computed from shared tags, control component and key-operation subjects — handy when you are reconciling controls across an audit.

-   [**ISO/IEC 27701:2025 A.3.24** — Information backup](https://support.icompaas.com/compliance/iso-27701-2025/a-3-24-information-backup)
-   [**CIS Controls v8 11.3** — Protect Recovery Data](https://support.icompaas.com/compliance/cis-controls-v8/11-3-protect-recovery-data)
-   [**NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5 IR-3(2)** — Coordination With Related Plans](https://support.icompaas.com/compliance/nist-sp-800-53-rev-5/ir-3-2-coordination-with-related-plans)

## References

-   [Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (India) — India DPDP Act 2023](https://www.meity.gov.in/content/digital-personal-data-protection-act-2023)
-   Catalogue identifier: `Control SE-004`

Topics: business continuitydata protectionbackup recovery

## Related compliance guidance

- [India's DPDP Act 2023: a practical compliance guide for cloud teams](https://support.icompaas.com/compliance/india-dpdp-act-2023): Start with the full DPDP Act implementation guide — scope, roadmap, evidence and how the assessment runs.
- [GDPR compliance: a practical implementation guide for cloud-native SaaS teams](https://support.icompaas.com/compliance/gdpr): Most teams extend an existing GDPR programme to India; this guide shows where the lawful bases, timelines and breach rules differ.
- [ISO/IEC 27001:2022 compliance: a practical implementation guide](https://support.icompaas.com/compliance/iso-27001-2022): Rule 6's reasonable security safeguards map almost one-to-one onto ISO 27001 Annex A controls you may already operate.