74% of respondents said that they are already using cryptography, or plan to use it within the next 18 months, to help address major enterprise security issues, including the following:
- authentication of people or devices
- secure communications
- remote connectivity
- protecting data integrity
- protecting data at rest
When asked about the drivers for the increased use of encryption within the enterprise data confidentiality was rated as the highest priority.
On the topic of cryptographic keys, 16% of respondents report that they have more than 1,000 keys on their servers, whilst 24% have more than 1,000 keys on their desktops. 9% of respondents have more than 10,000 keys on servers and 11% say they have more than 10,000 keys on desktops.
“The survey suggests we are at a turning point for the wide spread use of cryptography within IT security” says Richard Moulds, vice president marketing at nCipher. “The greater use of encryption, decryption, signing and authentication means that managing cryptographic keys across the enterprise is becoming increasingly complex and diverse. We believe there will be significant growth in the number of cryptographic keys that need to be managed, clearly demonstrating there is a growing need in the market place for systems and processes to manage this booming issue.”
Other significant findings of the survey include:
- SSL isn’t just for the Internet
SSL is already widely used to protect e-commerce transactions over the Internet, with 81% of respondents using SSL for Internet-facing servers. But SSL has also become a key component of internal security: 45% of respondents use SSL to protect traffic between internal servers. This is not simply a case of using external security for internal use. While typical Internet deployments require only one unique certificate per website, the use of SSL internally requires a unique certificate for each server. The upshot is an exploding number of cryptographic keys and certificates within the enterprise.
- Encryption protects data at rest
To protect data at rest, 82% of respondents use encryption or plan to use it within 18 months. Data at rest can be protected at a number of layers – backup tapes, storage systems, databases or within the application itself – but wherever data at rest is encrypted, the protection of long lived data gives rise to additional key management challenges for enterprises including the need to securely escrow and recover keys, potentially for many years.
- Growth in cryptography for device authentication
49% of respondents said that they plan to use 802.1x technologies to authenticate devices, control user traffic to a protected network and reduce security vulnerabilities associated with connections.
- Security decision-makers are rapidly deploying Trusted Platform Modules (TPMs) to encrypt data within desktop and laptop computers
25% of respondents have already deployed or plan to deploy next generation TPM-enabled desktop and laptop computers within the next two years, demonstrating that enterprises increasingly want to protect keys within dedicated hardware security components, rather than leave them unprotected in software. While this reflects an impressive adoption rate for a relatively new technology 28% of respondents still didn’t know what their plans were regarding new TPM-based security features.
About nCipher
nCipher is a leading provider of cryptographic security, enabling our customers to meet the challenges of verifying identity, protecting data and complying with security regulations. nCipher’s solutions provide a unified approach to cryptographic management providing strict access controls and high assurance trusted processing, overcoming traditional issues of scalability, performance and weak platform security. The world’s leading organizations work with nCipher to protect security critical systems such as web site infrastructure, online banking and payment processing networks, PKI, web services, databases and digital rights management schemes.
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