With data protection and privacy breaches increasingly making headlines in India, foreign clients are beginning to question the reliability of outsourcing and are considering insourcing, according to Adel Melek, partner, global leader, security and privacy services at Deloitte.

Melek was speaking at the National Association of Software and Service Companies' seminar on 'Security and Safety' held in Hyderabad on Tuesday. "India does not have a comprehensive privacy legislation though the IT Act  of 2000 deals with most aspects of privacy legislation," he said.

"Security attacks will continue to grow and the time between discovery of a vulnerability and the potential exploitation is diminishing from months to days if not hours. BPOs in India, therefore, are going to be under tremendous pressure due to international backlash," Melek said.

Melek said Indian BPOs should not underestimate the negative publicity and should conduct third party reviews on security and adopt a recognised security standard.

According to Chalam Peddada, corporate information security and business continuity leader at Satyam Computer Services [Get Quote] Limited, data security has become a hygiene factor required by all stakeholders of a company.

"It has been seen that current and former employees of a company are involved in most of the security breaches, though inadvertently. The weakest area, therefore, is with regard to employee training," he added.

Peddada also called for public-private partnership in this regard as "businesses have no choice but to comply".