Section 14

Section 14 defines the concept of a 'secure electronic record' — a status that carries significant legal and evidentiary weight under the IT Act. The provision establishes a simple but powerful rule: if a security procedure (as prescribed under Section 16) has been applied to an electronic record at a specific point in time, that record is legally deemed secure from that moment until the time it is verified. A security procedure applied to an electronic record typically involves a cryptographic hash function — a mathematical process that generates a unique fingerprint of the document's contents. If the document is altered after the hash is generated, the hash will no longer match, proving tampering. More sophisticated procedures may include digital timestamps from a trusted authority. The legal significance of 'secure' status flows from Section 16's prescribed procedures and ultimately from the Indian Evidence Act (now Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam 2023): a secure electronic record benefits from a presumption of integrity. In practical terms: a company's financial records secured under a prescribed procedure, a bank's electronic ledger entries with applied security procedures, or a government's electronically stored official documents may all be admitted in court with reduced evidentiary burden on the party relying on them. Section 14 should be read alongside Section 15 (secure electronic signature), which applies the same framework to signatures rather than the underlying document.