PRESIDENTIAL CIRCULAR ON INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION SECURITY MEASURES

                                                                                   12.07.2019

On 6 July 2019, “Presidential Circular on Information and Communication Security Measures” (“Circular”) was published in the Turkish Official Gazette.

The circular stipulates that certain measures shall be taken in cases of data breaches which may cause crucial risks to the national security and/or public safety. In those premises, some of the impositions stated in the circular as follows;

• Data relating to health, civic or contact information shall be stored securely within national borders.
• Critical data stored by state institutions and organizations shall be kept in secured and physically protected closed networks. Any access to those networks shall be limited. The logs related to accesses shall be unalterable. Data shall not be kept in cloud services in any case.
• Any software or hardware that is used to store and process the data, shall not have back-door option. This clause shall be stated in software-hardware contracts.
• For the communication of critical data, radio-link shall not be used. If it is requisite, data shall be encrypted using national technologies.
• Operators licensed to provide communication services will be obliged to establish Internet Exchange Points.

You can find the full text of Circular (in Turkish) here.

For more information, please contact info@zumbul.av.tr.