New Delhi: The government on Wednesday informed Parliament that there has been no breach of Aadhaar cardholders’ data from the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) database to date, underlining the robustness of security measures protecting the world’s largest biometric identity system.

Responding to a question in the Lok Sabha, Union Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Jitin Prasada said Aadhaar continues to remain secure due to strong technological and institutional safeguards put in place by the government.

“Aadhaar is the world's largest biometric identity system with approximately 134 crores live Aadhaar holders,” the ministry said. “It has completed more than 16,000 crore authentication transactions,” it added.

The minister said UIDAI follows a multi-layered security framework based on the “defence-in-depth” approach to safeguard personal data. “This means several levels of protection are built into the system, so even if one layer is compromised, others continue to safeguard the data,” the ministry stated. “The entire system is regularly reviewed and audited to ensure it remains secure,” it added.

To prevent misuse or interception, Aadhaar data is protected using advanced encryption technologies, both during transmission and while being stored.

The Aadhaar system has also been declared a protected system, bringing it under the continuous supervision of the National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre (NCIIPC), which regularly issues security advisories to strengthen UIDAI’s cybersecurity framework.

In addition, an independent audit agency has been engaged to build and monitor a Governance, Risk, Compliance and Performance framework for the Aadhaar ecosystem.

The minister further informed the House that UIDAI conducts continuous cybersecurity audits of its applications, including static and dynamic security testing, to identify and address vulnerabilities at an early stage.