Abstract

This case discusses the security concerns over the Aadhaar card, a national identity project launched by the Government of India (GoI), which seeks to collect biometric and demographic data of residents of India and store this data in a centralized database. Aadhaar is a 12-digit unique identification number issued to the people of India for their unique identification. It is issued by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI). Using Aadhaar, a person’s identity can be certified and authenticated in an easy and cost effective way. Aadhaar has been linked to many GoI welfare schemes and is used as identity proof to open a bank account, get a passport, etc. However, there have been substantial deliberations over the privacy and security issues related to the Aadhaar project. Aadhaar is considered to be prone to possible system hacks, insider leaks, and tampering of authentication records and audit trails in the absence of proper security policies. There have been reports of Aadhaar breach in different regions of India and people are sceptical about its security. Even though the GoI is taking a lot of measures to safeguard Aadhaar data, there is a lot to be done to enhance the safekeeping of the data.

Learning Objectives

The case is structured to achieve the following Learning Objectives:

• Analyze the significance of Aadhaar for Indian citizens.
• Understand how Aadhaar functions as a link to GoI schemes for people.
• Explore different possibilities of a breach to hack Aadhaar data.
• Analyze how the GoI can strengthen its security measures to safeguard the Aadhaar data.

Keywords

Cyber Security; Management Information System (MIS); e-governance ; Data Security; Information System Security; Data breach; UIDAI