Data security is of paramount importance, especially for the information that contains personal identity numbers. Aadhaar number is one such identity for which its secure management while availing various Government services has always remained a concern.  

Unique Identification Authority of India mandates the secure storage of resident’s Aadhaar number in a separate repository known as ‘Aadhaar Data Vault’. 

All the Government departments offering citizen services and using Aadhaar number in their application workflows for any purpose such as disbursement of beneficiary schemes, employee details, scholarship details, health records etc. are required to use Aadhaar Data Vault for secure management of Aadhaar numbers and its related data.  

As per UIDAI, the Aadhaar number stored in the Aadhaar Data Vault must be mapped and referred by the key termed as the reference key. 

• The Aadhaar Data Vault (ADV) offered as a national service to securely store and manage Aadhaar numbers to various government, private and PSUs. To save on both initial and long-term maintenance costs, MeitY promotes the use of the Aadhaar Data Vault. The service offers features such as identifying the same Aadhaar number across multiple schemes, flexible reference key management, transaction dashboards, seamless integration, cost-effectiveness, and compliance with UIDAI guidelines.

1. Flexibility to choose unique or multiple reference key generations to refer to one Aadhaar Number.

2. Secure and seamless integration with the existing applications through REST API-based Aadhaar data vault service.

3. Enabled by FIPS 140-2 Certified device to manage Keys used for encryption and decryption.

4. Transaction statistics through a Dashboard.

5. Audit and Access logs.

6. Store your Aadhaar details for batch or individual transactions.

• 7. Logical Key Segregation in the HSM.

1. Open Source-based solution.

2. Seamless integration with applications.

3. Build on REST-based API calls.

4. Enabled by FIPS 140-2 Certified device to manage Keys used for encryption and decryption.

• Integration libraries to integrate with ADV APIs are provided in Java, .Net, Python, and PHP.

Mr. Vijay Jain, adv[at]cdac[dot]in