Encryption use grows, as some businesses see it as solution to data breach disclosure

The use of encryption continues to grow in response to consumer concerns, privacy compliance regulations and on-going cyber attacks .
According to research by Thales and Ponemon Institute, there are still major challenges in managing key across what are the mostly fragmented and tactical deployments of encryption technologies. The survey of 4,700 business and IT managers found that 34 per cent of respondents say that their organisation uses encryption extensively, while 36 per cent of organisations have an enterprise wide encryption strategy.
The top three reasons for deploying encryption are: compliance with data protection mandates, to address specific security threats and to reduce the scope of compliance audits. Also, the use of encryption had a dramatic effect on the perceived requirement to notify those effected in the event of a data breach with nearly half of respondents believing that the use of encryption removed the need to disclose a breach.
Richard Moulds, vice president strategy at Thales e-Security said: “Whilst key management is now being recognised as a widespread organisational challenge, it is not a new issue. The challenges associated with key management have been addressed in heavily regulated industries such as payments processing, where best practices are well proven and could translate easily to a variety of other verticals.”