A new report released by Symantec has concluded that solutions for the managing of crucial data encryption keys are lacking. The 2011 Enterprise Encryption Trends Survey report concluded that this is costing organizations an average of $124,965 per year; this can be evidenced by how the average organization has up to five different encryption solutions deployed.

Joe Gow, director of product management at Symantec, observed that "while many organizations understand the importance of encrypting their data, issues with key management and multiple point products can give them inconsistent visibility into what has been protected." Left unchecked, it is obvious that the problem can only get worse as adoption of encryption gains additional traction in the enterprise.

Specifically, the survey noted that 48 percent of enterprises have increased their use of encryption over the past two years, with half of their data encrypted at some point. Unfortunately, it was found that the use of unapproved encryption deployment is taking place on a "somewhat" or "extremely frequent" basis, with 52 percent of organizations having experienced serious issues as a result, such as lost encryption keys or forgotten passphrases.

In addition, 26 percent of surveyed organizations cited former employees who had refused to return keys.

The survey was conducted by Symantec-acquired encryption vendor PGP and examined 1,575 enterprises around the world. Symantec suggests that organizations build a plan to avoid the pitfalls experienced by survey respondents, such as building a consistent strategy to handle enterprise-wide encryption and key management prior to an actual deployment. 

For more:
- check out this article at Dark Reading
- check out this article at eWeek

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