09 From DIGIPIN To PayPal's RBI Nod: The Legal Pulse Of India's Digital Economy (May 31, 2025) (Podcast)

Cybersecurity regulation in India has, until now, largely spoken to the entity that suffers the breach. The 2022 CERT-In Directions issued under Section 70B of the Information Technology Act, 2000 fixed a six-hour reporting clock on the organisation that detects an incident. The new Guidelines flip the lens onto the entity upstream of that breach, the OEM or technology provider that built the product in the first place. For the first time, vendors supplying software, firmware, cloud platforms, or APIs into India carry direct, time-bound, and independently verifiable obligations of their own and not obligations that are merely passed through a customer contract, but obligations CERT-In itself may enforce.

In a rare use of its extraordinary powers under Article 142 of the Constitution of India, the Supreme Court heard a curative petition filed by DMRC, challenging an earlier order that had upheld the arbitral award. The judgment brings finality to a decade-long contractual dispute that began in 2013 with arbitration proceedings.

On June 3, 2026, the Supreme Court of India’s AI Committee released preliminary draft of the Regulations for Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Courts, 2026 (“The Draft”). This marks a shift from scattered experiments with AI tools for translation, transcription, research and case management. With over 93,000 pending matters as of March 2026, the guidelines aim to ease processes for officials and citizens. AI could help reduce backlogs through automated cause-list preparation, transcription, research, and defect scrutiny, but its use also raises serious concerns.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems are fundamentally dependent on data, and a significant portion of the information used to develop and deploy such systems may relate to identifiable individuals. This creates an important intersection between AI technologies and India’s evolving data protection framework.

In July 2026, the Delhi High Court declined to grant ANI Media an interim injunction against OpenAI, being the first Indian Court to substantively engage on whether training a large language model with copyrighted content is unlawful. At the centre of this finding is whether OpenAI’s use of ANI’s articles to train its models, fall under the ambit of the ‘fair dealing’ exception under Section 52(1)(a) of the Copyright Act, 1957 (“Act”).

Between May and August 2026, AI regulation has continued to develop rapidly, with a focus on accountability, transparency, human oversight and protection against AI-related harms.

As the curtain falls on 2025, the corporate world is fastened in an unrelenting race to weave Artificial Intelligence (AI) into every layer of commerce. Yet, much like the tale of Icarus, the pursuit of innovation raises a pressing question: has the thirst for technological ascendancy led companies to soar too close to the sun, neglecting the shield of cyber resilience?

Cloud ERP is becoming central to how Gulf businesses manage finance, HR, and other core functions. For CFOs and CIOs, choosing an ERP now involves looking beyond features to assess how the system will handle sensitive financial and employee data, meet local requirements, and fit the broader security needs of the business.

On 24 July 2026, the Central Board of Direct Taxes issued a comprehensive Guidance Note to assist Reporting Crypto-Asset Service Providers in complying with the dedicated reporting framework under the Income-tax Act, 2025 and the Income-tax Rules, 2026 for reporting crypto asset transactions.

The character of Dr. Ian Malcolm in the 1993 movie titled, “Jurassic Park”, perhaps put it most succinctly when he spoke about the adaptability of life. Change is constant, and like any other living organism, humans are remarkably proficient at adapting to their ever-changing surroundings.