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Only 27% of Organizations Use Encryption
An anonymous reader writes "According to a Check Point survey of 224 IT and security administrators, over 40% of businesses in the last year have more remote users connecting to the corporate network from home or when traveling, compared to 2008. The clear majority (77%) of businesses have up to a quarter of their total workforce consisting of regular remote users. Yet, regardless of the growth in remote users, just 27% of respondents say their companies currently use hard disk encryption to protect sensitive data on corporate endpoints. In addition, only 9% of businesses surveyed use encryption for removable storage devices, such as USB flash drives. A more mobile workforce carrying large amounts of data on portable devices leaves confidential corporate data vulnerable to loss, theft and interception."
We would do it if we werent undermanned, underfunded, and had competent users.
Support for things is already maxing many people out, now you want to add this?
Please.
I'm with you. In the consulting space, and the MAJORITY of companies don't have anything coming close to 'sensitive corporate data' to fall into the wrong hands that would necessitate encryption. To tell you the truth, the majority couldn't give two hoots about who reads their monthly sales figures, HR reviews, etc etc. Anyone who REALLY wants to is going to read them anyway, right? The MAJORITY of companies could care less. Eg. a Club. They sell alcohol and have a couple of restaurants, etc. Exactly the same as the Club down the street. And there is NO competitive advantage for the 'club down the street' to gain by reading the competitors reporting. Not a big deal.
So long as you don't work for Equifax, Choicepoint, the IRS, FBI or any other organization that's going to have my SSN on your Laptop. :)
That's another problem altogether - that kind of information should never be carried on one's laptop, period. It should only be accessed through a secure tunnel, and it should reside at HQ. There it should be encrypted.
End anonymous moderation and posting on
If you run a cleaning company or you're a group of plumbers or perhaps you have a fairly large landscape gardening company then your data just is not that important or a target. So this survey is really quite useless, so what is Agnes Cleaners do not encrypt their thumb drives with their cleaning rota on it? Nobody cares. So whilst all organisations should encrypt just because it is sensible, not all organisations really need to bother because the likelihood of anything happening to their data is so small that it's just not worth the effort of sorting out the idiots who call up the part-time IT admin guy because they have forgotten their encryption key (again).