Kazakh president approves amendments to info security, digital assets law

ASTANA. Dec 12 (Interfax) - Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has signed a bill into law amending some of the country's legislative acts dealing with information security, information technology and digital assets, the presidential press service said on Monday.

The purpose of this law is to update Kazakh legislation on information security and personal data protection, and to regulate digital mining operations.

The amendments ban the collection and processing of copies of identification documents on paper, except for situations where there is no integration with the computer systems of government agencies and state-owned legal entities and if it is impossible to carry out identification using technological tools.

Furthermore, the law requires immigrants to provide copies of their IDs in order to protect national interests and ensure national security.

The authorized agency in charge of personal data protection, the Ministry of Digital Development, Innovations and the Aerospace Industry, will be given the additional function of exercising state control over compliance with the law on personal data and personal data protection.

The law also contains a procedure for revoking, reinstating and renewing digital mining licenses.

At the same time, under the law, every operator will have to inform the regulator of a personal data leak within three days of detecting it.

The law also stipulates legal regulation of "white-hat hackers" and the operations of Kazakhstan's analog of the Bug Bounty platform.

Another section of the law envisions establishing a state information security center which will serve only the computer systems of government agencies. There are around 350 state computer systems today.

The center will function under the auspices of the National Security Committee's State Technical Service.

In addition, a software source code repository will be created at the State Technical Service. The source code of electronic government software will be stored in it.