An Ounce of Encryption is Worth a Pound of Cure

Although there is a lot of focus these days on data breaches that result from the activities of cyber-criminals and other digital miscreants, in truth the majority of data breaches are caused by simple negligence.

In fact, a recent study conducted by The Ponemon Institute found that 41 percent of the data breaches examined in the study were caused by negligence; that compares to the 31 percent of the breaches attributed to malicious or criminal attacks.

The implications of those numbers are profound, especially in our increasingly mobile world. All it takes is for one employee to lose a mobile computing device containing customer data or, worse yet, critical intellectual property to create a major security incident.

Given the fact that mobile computing isn’t likely to go away soon, the use of encryption, which renders data unreadable without a key, has become a critical business requirement. Historically, managing encryption has been beyond the ability of most SMB organizations to cost-effectively deploy and manage. However, in the last year, encryption has become much easier to manage, which means there really is no excuse for any type of negligence to result in a major security breach.

In fact, it’s only a matter of time before regulatory agencies and the legal system come to the same conclusion, which means the penalties associated with a security breach will become even stiffer.

They say an ounce of prevention is always worth a pound of cure. When it comes to IT security these days that ounce of prevention is called encryption.