Because the assault floor expands and the risk panorama grows extra complicated, it’s time to contemplate whether or not your knowledge safety technique is match for function
05 Sep 2025
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5 min. learn
A single safety breach can jeopardize the whole lot 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 status to in the end the specter of placing the complete way forward for your organization in danger.
Based on IBM’s Value of a Knowledge Breach Report 2025, the common price of a knowledge breach stands at almost $4.5 million. However the determine might attain many instances that relying on what sort of knowledge is stolen.
Stats like these ought to make protecting measures resembling knowledge encryption a no brainer. In reality, 87% of companies mentioned final yr that they might enhance funding in encryption . If your online business just isn’t becoming a member of them, it could be value 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 info, whether or not at relaxation or in transit. There are various causes for wanting to take action. These embrace:
- Distant working: Almost a quarter of US staff do business from home at the very least a number of the time. This creates additional dangers across the instruments they use to take action, and the information saved and accessed by way of these instruments. Private laptops and units will not be as safe as their company equivalents.
- A knowledge explosion: International companies are creating extra knowledge than ever. It’s anticipated that 181 zettabytes can be generated in 2025, which means that there’s extra for adversaries to steal and maintain to ransom, and extra likelihood of it being by accident leaked. From prospects’ personally identifiable info (PII), to delicate IP, monetary knowledge, and M&A plans, if these change into compromised, there are probably severe repercussions in retailer. The info explosion can be accelerating because of progress in AI and huge language fashions (LLMs), which require enormous volumes of probably delicate knowledge to coach.
- Gadget loss/theft: As extra staff adapt to a hybrid working setting, there’s a larger danger that the laptops, tablets and different cellular units they carry with them are misplaced or stolen. If not protected, the information saved or accessed by way of these could possibly be compromised.
- Third-party threats: Risk 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 simple 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 knowledge 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 by way of infostealer malware.
- Ransomware: Encryption can be a weapon wielded by attackers, and risk 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 enhance, based on Verizon. An encryption resolution can’t cease the unhealthy guys from locking you out of your knowledge, however it’s going to 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 by way of end-to-end encrypted messaging platforms, however most companies nonetheless perform on electronic mail. Sadly, electronic mail wasn’t designed with safety as a core, built-in characteristic, and except it’s end-to-end encrypted it may be a juicy goal for eavesdropping and interception. As a way to preserve delicate knowledge secure from prying eyes, encryption that scrambles the e-mail content material from the sender’s machine till it reaches the recipient’s machine ought to 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 because of carelessness fairly than malice, circumstances like the Coinbase breach spotlight the persistent risk from the latter.
The price of poor knowledge safety
In case your company knowledge results in the mistaken fingers, 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 defend their knowledge.
- A major 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 value contemplating the cyber-insurance context of knowledge safety. Carriers both could not insure your online business if it doesn’t deploy robust knowledge encryption, or else enhance 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 supply a excessive stage of safety. However past this, you will want 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 in style kinds 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 supply 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 interested by an encryption resolution that covers:
- Information and folders, digital disks and archives: Helpful for delicate knowledge that should be shared or saved in unencrypted environments (e.g., in case you have a shared units coverage).
- Detachable media: To guard knowledge residing on any USB drives or comparable 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 electronic mail content material.
It’s doable to get many of those capabilities in encryption options with centralized administration, like these provided by ESET.
Bringing all of it collectively
Knowledge encryption is a much-needed line of protection that ought to be one of many important layers of any fit-for-purpose safety technique. On the identical time, it’s all the time necessary to keep in mind that it really works greatest as considered one of 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 software safety, and end-user safety consciousness coaching will all go a great distance towards retaining your online business secure.
In a world of repeatedly evolving threats, take into account proactive protection that comes with superior EDR/prolonged detection response (XDR) and affords vital detection capabilities throughout endpoint, electronic mail, cloud and different layers, plus response and risk looking in actual time. For corporations which are brief on sources, managed detection and response (MDR) companies can do the heavy lifting, pairing industry-leading prevention, detection and response capabilities with world-class safety analysis and risk intelligence.
