Firms in Regulated Industries Smarten Up on Cybersecurity, Encrypt More than Ever
The number of businesses making extensive use of encryption spiked seven percent over the past year, the largest increase in over a decade, according to research released Wednesday by Thales. More than two in five companies (41 percent) now use extensive encryption, the 2016 Encryption Applications Trend Study shows.
Ponemon surveyed over 5,000 professionals from 14 industries in 11 countries on behalf of Thales for the 11th annual study. It found that because of regulations, privacy concerns, and the need to protect against breaches, companies in financial services, healthcare and pharmaceutical, and technology are leading encryption adoption.
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“The increased usage of encryption can be traced to many factors, chief among them being cyber-attacks, privacy compliance regulations and consumer concerns,” John Grimm, senior director security strategy at Thales e-Security said. “Additionally, the continuing rise of cloud computing as well as prominent news stories related to encryption and access to associated keys have caused organizations to evolve their strategy and thinking with respect to encryption key control and data residency. Our global research shows that significantly more companies are embracing an enterprise-wide encryption strategy, and demanding higher levels of performance, cloud-friendliness, and key management capabilities from their encryption applications.”
The study also found that the way companies think about encryption applications changes as their encryption practices mature.
Companies with mature encryption strategies are more likely to deploy Hardware Security Modules (HSMs) broadly across encryption applications. SSL/TLS, database encryption, and application level encryption are the most common uses for HSMs, the study said.
Companies with mature strategies are much more likely to apply encryption to big data repositories, public cloud services, business applications, and private cloud infrastructure, respectively. They also value regional segregation, tamper resistant dedicated hardware, and support for both cloud and on-premise deployment more highly.
Support for encryption both in the cloud and on-premise has risen in consideration to the second most important feature of encryption applications, while companies now consider performance and latency the most important feature.
Earlier this year the 2016 Global Encryption Trends Study, another in the series of Thales-Ponemon reports, showed a gradual increase in whole-enterprise encryption strategies.
The spike in business’ use of encryption roughly coincides with efforts by numerous governments to limit encryption (or its effectiveness), including those of the US, UK, and Russia.
Source: TheWHIR