Because the assault floor expands and the menace panorama grows extra advanced, it’s time to think about whether or not your knowledge safety technique is match for objective
05 Sep 2025
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5 min. learn
A single safety breach can jeopardize all the things you’ve constructed. The theft of mental property and confidential buyer knowledge can lead to a cascade of penalties, from hefty monetary losses and a shattered model popularity to in the end the specter of placing the complete way forward for your organization in danger.
In line with IBM’s Price of a Knowledge Breach Report 2025, the typical price of an information breach stands at almost $4.5 million. However the determine might attain many instances that relying on what sort of information is stolen.
Stats like these ought to make protecting measures corresponding to knowledge encryption a no brainer. In reality, 87% of companies stated final yr that they might improve funding in encryption . If your corporation shouldn’t be becoming a member of them, it is perhaps price asking why.
Why do you want encryption?
By remodeling plain textual content knowledge into an unreadable format, knowledge encryption serves to guard your group’s most delicate data, whether or not at relaxation or in transit. There are a lot of causes for wanting to take action. These embody:
Distant working: Almost 1 / 4 of US staff make money working from home at the least a number of the time. This creates further dangers across the instruments they use to take action, and the info saved and accessed through these instruments. Private laptops and units is probably not as safe as their company equivalents.
An information explosion: International companies are creating extra knowledge than ever. It’s anticipated that 181 zettabytes will probably be generated in 2025, that means that there’s extra for adversaries to steal and maintain to ransom, and extra likelihood of it being unintentionally leaked. From prospects’ personally identifiable data (PII), to delicate IP, monetary knowledge, and M&A plans, if these turn into compromised, there are probably critical repercussions in retailer. The info explosion can be accelerating because of progress in AI and enormous language fashions (LLMs), which require big volumes of doubtless delicate knowledge to coach.
Machine loss/theft: As extra staff adapt to a hybrid working setting, there’s a larger danger that the laptops, tablets and different cell units they carry with them are misplaced or stolen. If not protected, the info saved or accessed through these might be compromised.
Third-party threats: Menace actors proceed to get higher at breaching company cyber defenses. Final yr within the US alone there have been over 3,100 particular person knowledge compromises, leading to breach notifications being despatched to greater than 1.3 billion victims.
Underperforming safety: It’s getting more and more straightforward to bypass conventional defenses on the company “perimeter” by merely utilizing stolen, guessed or phished credentials belonging to staff. Credential abuse accounted for preliminary entry in a fifth (22%) of information breaches final yr, with phishing at 16%, says Verizon. Infostealers are a rising headache. One report claims that 75% (2.1 billion) of three.2 billion credentials compromised in 2024 had been stolen through infostealer malware.
Ransomware: Encryption can be a weapon wielded by attackers, and menace actors are inflicting rising issues for community defenders with ransomware and knowledge extortion schemes. Ransomware was current in 44% of all knowledge breaches final yr, a 37% annual improve, in response to Verizon. An encryption resolution can’t cease the dangerous guys from locking you out of your knowledge, however it’ll render something they steal ineffective. As the specter of AI-driven ransomware looms ever bigger, the necessity for a complete knowledge safety technique has by no means been larger.
Insecure communications: A lot of the world communicates through end-to-end encrypted messaging platforms, however most companies nonetheless perform on e-mail. Sadly, e-mail wasn’t designed with safety as a core, built-in function, and until it’s end-to-end encrypted it may be a juicy goal for eavesdropping and interception. So as to maintain delicate knowledge protected from prying eyes, encryption that scrambles the e-mail content material from the sender’s machine till it reaches the recipient’s machine must be a non-negotiable line of protection.
Insider threats: Verizon claims 18% of breaches concerned inner actors final yr, rising to 29% in EMEA. Though many of those incidents are as a result of carelessness reasonably than malice, circumstances just like the Coinbase breach spotlight the persistent menace from the latter.
The price of poor knowledge safety
In case your company knowledge results in the incorrect palms, it might result in:
Main monetary prices (IBM lists detection and escalation actions; notification of regulators, knowledge topics and third events; post-breach response; and misplaced enterprise).
Reputational harm. Buyer loyalty is tough received and simply misplaced: 94% of organizations Cisco spoke to say their prospects wouldn’t purchase from them if they didn’t correctly shield their knowledge.
A big compliance burden: Rules and requirements together with DORA, NIS2, GDPR, HIPAA, CCPA, and PCI DSS 4.0 all demand knowledge encryption in some kind.
It’s additionally price contemplating the cyber-insurance context of information safety. Carriers both could not insure your corporation if it doesn’t deploy robust knowledge encryption, or else improve premiums.
What sort of encryption works greatest?
Encryption scrambles plaintext knowledge utilizing a specialised algorithm and encryption key(s). Make sure you select merchandise based mostly on confirmed, sturdy algorithms like AES-256 that provide a excessive degree of safety. However past this, you have to to determine on the answer that most closely fits your wants. There are merchandise designed particularly for encrypting databases, and cloud environments, for instance.
One of the vital fashionable forms of knowledge safety is full-disk encryption (FDE). This scrambles knowledge on system disks, partitions and full drives throughout laptops, desktops and servers. When evaluating options, look out for options that provide sturdy encryption (AES-256), cross-platform assist (throughout Home windows and macOS, for instance), versatile licensing, centralized management from a single admin portal, and minimal end-user interplay.
Relying in your necessities, you may additionally be involved in an encryption resolution that covers:
Recordsdata and folders, digital disks and archives: Helpful for delicate knowledge that should be shared or saved in unencrypted environments (e.g., when you’ve got a shared units coverage).
Detachable media: To guard knowledge residing on any USB drives or related from theft or loss.
E mail and attachments: Encrypting knowledge in transit will assist guarantee solely the supposed recipient will have the ability to learn e-mail content material.
It’s attainable to get many of those capabilities in encryption options with centralized administration, like these supplied by ESET.
Bringing all of it collectively
Knowledge encryption is a much-needed line of protection that must be one of many important layers of any fit-for-purpose safety technique. On the identical time, it’s all the time essential to keep in mind that it really works greatest as one among a number of safeguards and layers of safety. Safety software program throughout all units, robust entry controls, together with multi-factor authentication (MFA), vulnerability and patch administration, file server and cloud utility safety, and end-user safety consciousness coaching will all go a great distance towards protecting your corporation protected.
In a world of repeatedly evolving threats, think about proactive protection that comes with superior EDR/prolonged detection response (XDR) and provides crucial detection capabilities throughout endpoint, e-mail, cloud and different layers, plus response and menace searching in actual time. For corporations which can be quick on assets, managed detection and response (MDR) providers can do the heavy lifting, pairing industry-leading prevention, detection and response capabilities with world-class safety analysis and menace intelligence.