A survey by nCipher of a cross-section of 237 security decision-makers (one-third of them senior management) at companies throughout the world reveals that cryptography is no longer a niche technology. These respondents indicate that they are rapidly increasing their use of cryptography to address an expanding range of security needs. The increasing use of cryptographic keys across such a wide array of functions such as encryption, decryption, signing and authentication means that use of these keys is becoming more complex and diverse, that they are becoming more numerous and that different keys are subject to different security policies. These trends will greatly complicate the management of keys across the enterprise.
In its 2005 study on encryption and the use of cryptography, nCipher found that 74 percent of respondents said that they are using or plan to use encryption in the next 18 months to help address at least five major enterprise security issues. As the use of encryption increases so does the number of cryptographic keys within the enterprise. Already, 16 percent of respondents report that they have more than 1,000 keys on servers and 24 percent have more than 1,000 keys on desktops. In the next order of magnitude, 9 percent of respondents report that they have more than 10,000 keys on servers, and 11 percent report they have more than 10,000 keys on desktops.
To download a free copy of the full report, “nCipher Cryptography in the Enterprise Survey 2005,” click to www.ncipher.com/crypto2005/.