Japan ranks the highest globally for encrypting cloud gateways and public cloud services
Thales, a leader in critical information systems, cybersecurity and data security, announces the results of its 2018 Encryption Trends Study in Japan. The report, based on independent research by the Ponemon Institute and sponsored by Thales, reflects some of the changes and challenges Japanese organizations are experiencing due to widespread cloud deployments, and the need to protect sensitive information, such as intellectual property, from internal and external threats as well as accidental disclosure.
The report reveals enterprises have accelerated adoption of encryption strategies in Japan in order to protect sensitive data or applications, with 45% of respondents saying they have an encryption strategy applied consistently across their organizations. This is above the global average of 43%.
- Encryption for big data repositories and private cloud infrastructure has experienced double-digit growth;
- Over the past two years, system performance and latency, and integration with other security tools such as security information and event management (SIEM) and ID management are the features that have increased the most in importance; and,
- Intellectual property (60%) and financial records (59%) are the two most commonly encrypted data types in Japan.
Steady growth for encryption in the cloud
The increasing use of multiple cloud providers has organizations struggling to cope with a higher number of separate encryption deployments, causing a greater need for skilled personnel to handle key management. In fact, Japan ranked the highest of all countries surveyed for encrypting cloud gateways (62%) and public cloud services (46%). Additionally, 83% of Japan respondents either use the cloud for sensitive/non-sensitive applications and data today, or will do so within the next two years. Sixty-three percent are using more than one public cloud provider, and 76% plan to in the next two years.
A case for key protection, key management and encryption applications
Both key management solutions including hardware security modules (HSMs) as well as encryption applications have an important role to play in data protection initiatives. Performance, enforcement of policy, support for emerging algorithms and key management are top of mind as encryption use grows. For Japan, HSM core use cases include SSL/TLS, payment transaction processing, application level encryption and database encryption.
Data threats and challenges for encryption
According to the report, employee mistakes were the most critical threat to sensitive data at 55%. However, this statistic dropped by 20% when compared to last year. Threats posed by hackers (43%) and system or process malfunction (40%) were also top concerns. Like all other countries in the survey, data discovery is rated as the top challenge area in planning an encryption strategy in Japan, and this has climbed steadily over the past two years. However, the second most challenging aspect of encryption in Japan was the initial deployment of encryption technology at 53%, which was the highest rating for that challenge of all countries in the global survey.
Jean-Louis Moraud, president and CEO, Thales in Japan says:
“Widespread cloud adoption, the increasing need to protect customer personal information and intellectual property as well as the ongoing challenge to guard against data threats from both internal and external sources are major concerns in Japan. Japanese organizations have done a good job of putting sophisticated encryption strategies into place, but there is still work to be done to ensure sensitive data and information is not vulnerable to new attacks.”
Ritsuki Imada, director, Thales in Japan says:
“A key takeaway from this study is that organizations in Japan have a great track record of adopting encryption, especially when it comes to big data repositories and private cloud infrastructure. As Japan continues to deal with today’s threat landscape, fast, scalable data security tools, such as encryption together with strong policy management, that address both enterprise and cloud use cases are required. Fortunately, there are more data protection choices today than ever before including bring your own key (BYOK) and bring your own encryption (BYOE) solutions, which allow enterprises to apply the same encryption and key management solution across multiple platforms.”
The Global Encryption Trends Study is now in its thirteenth year. The Ponemon Institute surveyed more than 5,000 people across multiple industry sectors in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Australia, Japan, Brazil, the Russian Federation, Mexico, India, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Korea.
The new 2018 Encryption Trends Study in Japan can be downloaded here.