Despite a wealth of recent high profile data breaches, fewer than 30 percent of enterprises encrypt data across their on-premises data environments, within their cloud providers or on their mobile devices.
That’s according to French aerospace and security multinational Thales Group’s 2019 Data Threat Report. Its survey found that the danger of a breach occurring is high, with 60 percent of companies surveyed admitting that they had been compromised.
Enterprise executives are also acutely aware of the risks posed by a breach: 86 percent of the 1,200 surveyed for the report, conducted for Thales by International Data Corporation (IDC) acknowledged that they are vulnerable to attack.
Encryption use remains low
The fear has yet to drive a major uptick in enterprise encryption use.
Frank Dickson research VP for security products research at IDC commented in an emailed statement that: “Our research shows that no organisation is immune from data security threats and, in fact, we found that the most sophisticated organisations are more likely to indicate that they have experienced a data security breach.”
Company executives cited the increasing complexity of their data environments as a major barrier to securing all their sensitive data. For many years the practice was to keep data in a secure location that might only be accessed for record purposes.
Attributed to the complexity of cloud environments
The complexity of cloud environments is cited as a principal barrier by 44 percent of executives. This barrier was ranked higher than budget constraints and staffing issues.
Tina Stewart, VP of market strategy at Thales eSecurity wrote in the report that: “Organisations need to take a fresh look at how they implement a data security and encryption strategy in support of their transition to the cloud and meeting regulatory and compliance mandates. We have now reached a point where almost every organisation has been breached.”
Source: CBR Online
