Because the assault floor expands and the risk panorama grows extra advanced, it’s time to think about whether or not your knowledge safety technique is match for objective
05 Sep 2025
•
,
5 min. learn
A single safety breach can jeopardize all the pieces you’ve constructed. The theft of mental property and confidential buyer knowledge may end up in a cascade of penalties, from hefty monetary losses and a shattered model popularity to in the end the specter of placing your complete way forward for your organization in danger.
Based on IBM’s Value of a Information Breach Report 2025, the common price of a knowledge breach stands at almost $4.5 million. However the determine may attain many instances that relying on what sort of knowledge is stolen.
Stats like these ought to make protecting measures equivalent to knowledge encryption a no brainer. In actual fact, 87% of companies mentioned final 12 months that they’d enhance funding in encryption . If your online business just isn’t becoming a member of them, it may 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 data, whether or not at relaxation or in transit. There are various causes for wanting to take action. These embody:
- Distant working: Practically a quarter of US workers do business from home a minimum of a few of the time. This creates additional dangers across the instruments they use to take action, and the info saved and accessed by way of these instruments. Private laptops and units might not be as safe as their company equivalents.
- An information explosion: World companies are creating extra knowledge than ever. It’s anticipated that 181 zettabytes can be generated in 2025, that means that there’s extra for adversaries to steal and maintain to ransom, and extra likelihood of it being by accident leaked. From clients’ personally identifiable data (PII), to delicate IP, monetary knowledge, and M&A plans, if these change into compromised, there are probably critical repercussions in retailer. The info explosion can be accelerating due to development in AI and huge language fashions (LLMs), which require enormous volumes of doubtless delicate knowledge to coach.
- Gadget loss/theft: As extra workers adapt to a hybrid working atmosphere, there’s a higher danger that the laptops, tablets and different cellular units they carry with them are misplaced or stolen. If not protected, the info saved or accessed by way of these may very well be compromised.
- Third-party threats: Risk actors proceed to get higher at breaching company cyber defenses. Final 12 months 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 workers. Credential abuse accounted for preliminary entry in a fifth (22%) of knowledge breaches final 12 months, 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 have 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 12 months, a 37% annual enhance, in accordance with Verizon. An encryption resolution can’t cease the unhealthy guys from locking you out of your knowledge, however it is 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 higher.
- Insecure communications: A lot of the world communicates by way of end-to-end encrypted messaging platforms, however most companies nonetheless operate on e mail. Sadly, e mail wasn’t designed with safety as a core, built-in function, and except it’s end-to-end encrypted it may be a juicy goal for eavesdropping and interception. With the intention to hold delicate knowledge protected from prying eyes, encryption that scrambles the e-mail content material from the sender’s system till it reaches the recipient’s system ought to be a non-negotiable line of protection.
- Insider threats: Verizon claims 18% of breaches concerned inner actors final 12 months, rising to 29% in EMEA. Though many of those incidents are because of carelessness reasonably than malice, instances like the Coinbase breach spotlight the persistent risk from the latter.
The price of poor knowledge safety
In case your company knowledge leads to the incorrect palms, it may 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 difficult gained and simply misplaced: 94% of organizations Cisco spoke to assert their clients wouldn’t purchase from them if they didn’t correctly shield their knowledge.
- A big compliance burden: Laws 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 might not insure your online business if it doesn’t deploy sturdy knowledge encryption, or else enhance premiums.
What sort of encryption works finest?
Encryption scrambles plaintext knowledge utilizing a specialised algorithm and encryption key(s). Make sure you select merchandise primarily based on confirmed, sturdy algorithms like AES-256 that supply a excessive stage of safety. However past this, you will have 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 standard 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 help (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:
- Information and folders, digital disks and archives: Helpful for delicate knowledge that should be shared or saved in unencrypted environments (e.g., when you have 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 meant 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
Information 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 at all times essential to keep in mind that it really works finest as one in all a number of safeguards and layers of safety. Safety software program throughout all units, sturdy 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 protecting your online business protected.
In a world of repeatedly evolving threats, contemplate proactive protection that comes with superior EDR/prolonged detection response (XDR) and gives vital detection capabilities throughout endpoint, e mail, cloud and different layers, plus response and risk searching in actual time. For corporations which might be quick on assets, 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.
