Today, majority of organizations and many government departments and agencies have shifted their databases onto the cloud to improve efficiency and productivity of resources as well as bring down costs. Unfortunately, this move has exposed sensitive information to hackers, who have frequently launched cyber-attacks to retrieve and misuse data. The major challenge of cloud service providers has been of ensuring security.
Encryption is a process that uses algorithms to encode data as cyphertext. This cyphertext can only be made meaningful again, if the person or application accessing the data has the tools (encryption keys) to decode the cyphertext. So, if the data is stolen or accidentally shared, it is protected because it is indecipherable.
A recent Ponemon Institute study found that extensive use of encryption is a top factor in reducing the business impact and cost of a data breach, reducing cost on average by $125 per record. According to IBM, only 4% of the more than 9 billion data records lost or stolen since 2013 were encrypted, indicating that most data is vulnerable to cyber attackers.
Every year, more organizations adopt encryption to protect their sensitive data. According to the 2019 Ponemon Institute Global Encryption Trends Study, the percentage of companies with enterprise-wide encryption strategies has tripled in the last 15 years. With regulations like GDPR and the California Consumer Privacy Act providing incentives for companies to encrypt customer data, that trend will likely accelerate in 2020 and beyond.
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