Dubai: Only 30 per cent of the businesses in the Middle East have a comprehensive encryption strategy to secure data within enterprise and cloud applications, a report said.
Globally, the encryption strategy rate is 41 per cent while 60 per cent of respondents take one of two routes — they either perform encryption on premise prior to sending data to the cloud, or encrypt in the cloud using keys they generate and manage on premise, according to the findings of the Middle East edition of 2017 Global Encryption Trends Study by Thales, in conjunction with the Ponemon Institute.
“As businesses the world over increasingly turn to cloud services, we’re seeing a rapid rise in sensitive or confidential data being transferred to the cloud and yet in the Middle East less than a third of respondents had an overall, consistently applied encryption strategy,” said Philip Schreiber, regional sales director for Thales e-Security Middle East Africa and South Asia.
Top drivers for encryption
He said that encryption is now widely accepted as best-practice for securing data and a good encryption strategy depends on well-implemented encryption and proper key management.
The report showed that only 37 per cent are willing to turn over complete control of keys and encryption processes to cloud providers.
The top drivers for encryption are IP protection and protection of customer information. This is in contrast to the global data where compliance is, and historically always has been, the top driver for encryption.
In the Middle East, Schreiber said that compliance ranked fifth on the list at 28 per cent (as compared to the global average of 55 per cent). Encryption use in the Middle East is highest for internet communications, databases, and laptop hard drives
