Messaging News - August 2008 - (Page 19) lost or stolen laptop. A database breach. An intercepted email. Collectively, incidents like these have compromised the confidential information of hundreds of thousands of individuals. The number of people affected and the frequency of such incidents have given birth to federal and state mandates covering nearly every industry vertical. As complex as they are voluminous, each mandate contains provisions for securing (and often archiving), data, and provides best practice guidelines for safeguarding electronic communications including IM and email. Along with the unfortunate incidents that inspire mandates, go the erosion of the offending organization’s reputation and the confidence A Having said that, once this is accomplished, email is almost always the next thing on the priority list.” Though FUD and shocking headlines often hasten the implementation of new security solutions, Dasher says they don’t appear to have much affect on the adoption of email encryption. “As companies mature from a security perspective, we see a more methodical approach to ensuring that customer, employee, or patient data is secure regardless of where it lives.” The 2008 Annual Study: U.S. Enterprise Encryption Trends by The Ponemon Institute, and sponsored by PGP Corporation, found that 21 percent of organizations surveyed now have an encryption strategy applied consistently across the organization, up from 16 percent in 2007. The study also found that 74 percent of organizations have some type of encryption strategy either enterprise-wide or applied based on the type of data or applications used. For those organizations that have not yet secured messaging, Bibby asks, “What are you waiting for? The last thing a company wants is for an email security breach to damage the reputation of that business. A company can’t take a ‘wait-and-see’ approach; they need to be proactive in protecting the valuable information being communicated through email.” Dasher agrees, “Unprotected email/ messaging poses a critical risk to a corporation’s most sensitive data: customer information, financial data, To Encrypt or Not to Encrypt (That No Longer Should The Question Be) by Melisa LaBancz-Bleasdale of its customers. “Compliance will always be a driver for email encryption, but more and more companies are realizing the importance of protecting their brand and reputation,” observes Geoff Bibby, vice president of corporate marketing for Zix Corporation “Securing email communications gives peace of mind to both partners and customers.” John Dasher, director of product management for PGP Corporation, believes that many, if not most companies developing their enterprise security strategy now place Whole Disk Encryption (WDE) at the top of their list and email encryption second. “From a risk perspective, most companies are first concerned with locking down mobile assets— laptops, primarily,” he explains. “In the U.S., breach notification laws tend to drive behavior that first focuses on WDE for these devices as they tend to become lost or stolen. “The need for information security typically doesn’t change with the size of your business. The small company who goes to PGP’s corporate Web site and purchases a single copy of PGP Desktop Email is getting the same military-grade encryption that large enterprises depend on to protect their communications.” —John Dasher, PGP Corporation trade secrets, and other proprietary information. Exposure of this information can result in financial loss, legal ramifications and brand damage.” The New Era of Encryption While older encryption solutions were difficult to deploy, required mass storage, regular administration, and complex key management, today’s encryption vendors now offer streamlined, easy to use, when-you-want-it technologies to secure messaging. Hosted and ondemand encryption are gaining in popularity as organizations look for compliant ways to cut costs and IT burden. Voltage Security is seeing a significant rise in its on-demand encryption requests. “We now have over 600 customers and 4 million licensed users throughout major corporations,” says Wasim Ahmad, vice president of marketing for Voltage. “[On-demand] encryption messagingnews.com 19 http://www.messagingnews.com
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