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nCipher: South Korea prioritizing encryption for cloud, IoT, and other emerging technologies, finds 2019 Encryption Trends Study

Sep

02

2019

News Room Media Inquiry

News Room Media Inquiry

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nCipher Security, an Entrust Datacard company and provider of trust, integrity and control for business-critical information and applications, announces the results of its 2019 Korea Encryption Trends Study from the Ponemon Institute. As South Korean organizations adopt the public cloud and new digital initiatives such as the internet of things (IoT) and virtualized containers like Docker™ and others, they are also embracing encryption to protect their applications and sensitive information.

Encryption trends in South Korea

The use of cloud and other emerging technologies creates new security risks, which in turn is forcing organizations worldwide to focus on data protection solutions.

At 67% versus the global average of 60%, South Korea ranks among the regions seeing the highest number of organizations transferring data to the cloud – a pattern that is driving both more encryption, and higher use of hardware security modules (HSMs) to protect encryption keys. A majority (51%) of Korean organizations are utilizing HSMs, a number that ranks above the global average and is up 7% from last year, indicating a requirement for a hardened, tamper-resistant environment with higher levels of trust, integrity and control for both data and applications.

Over half of the respondents (53%) use encryption to protect cloud gateways, and 40% to protect public cloud services. Over one-third (38%) use HSMs for public cloud encryption, and 41% plan to use HSMs for this purpose in the next 12 months. This is notable, especially when considering the global figure of 33%.

In South Korea, only 37% of companies have an encryption strategy. Of that number, 38% use encryption to protect IoT platforms and data repositories. Almost one-third (32%) use encryption to protect IoT devices, and the same number also use the technology to protect Docker containers.

Data protection drivers and challenges

The top drivers for encrypting data in South Korea are to protect intellectual property (cited by 70% of respondents, a number that is 16% higher than the global average) and to protect customer personal information (53%). Part of this focus may be due to South Korea’s Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA), which is one of the strictest data protection regulations in the world.

As South Korean organizations juggle compliance and protecting data generated from emerging technologies and the cloud, data discovery is cited as the number one challenge in planning and executing a data encryption strategy (74% vs. the global average of 69%).

When addressing key management, over half (57%) of respondents rate SSH keys as being the most painful to manage. The second most painful type of keys to manage are keys for external cloud or hosted services including Bring Your Own Key (BYOK), which stands at 56%, up 4% since last year. Additionally, the pain associated with managing keys to embed into devices jumped from 19% in 2018 to 29% this year.

Dr. Larry Ponemon, chairman and founder of the Ponemon Institute, says:

“Enterprises are increasingly turning to cloud environments to help them save time and money. While these technologies are digitally transforming businesses, there are potential security risks associated with them. The use of encryption in South Korea and globally is driven by the need to protect intellectual property and sensitive information from both internal and external threats as well as accidental disclosure. Encryption usage is a clear indicator of a strong security posture. Organizations that deploy encryption are more aware of threats to sensitive and confidential information and making a greater investment in IT security.”

Kee Tae Kim, regional sales director, Northeast Asia, says:

“Organizations in South Korea are under pressure to protect their business-critical information and applications, but the proliferation of data generated by both established and emerging technologies can make for a challenging environment. nCipher empowers customers by providing a high assurance security foundation that ensures the integrity and trustworthiness of their data, applications and intellectual property.”

Download the 2019 South Korea Encryption Trends Study.

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