The study shows that automated key management helps companies deliver higher scalability, lower operational costs, reduce risk, establish consistent security policies and sustain regulatory companies.

"Management of encryption technologies across their complete lifecycle -- including discovering all certificates and keys, configuring applications and systems to use them in a manner consistent with company policies, performing lifecycle management tasks, and ongoing monitoring and reporting -- is tough stuff for companies striving to implement encryption more broadly throughout their infrastructures," said Trell Rohovit, President and CEO of Venafi. "Its encouraging that the Aberdeen research confirms what weve been seeing in the marketplace: Best-in-Class companies are eager to find and implement technologies that automate encryption management."

Aberdeen used the following performance criteria to distinguish "Best-in-Class" organizations from "Industry Average" and "Laggard" organizations in their use of encryption and key management to protect sensitive data:

  -- Increase in the total percentage of sensitive data identified, compared

     to a year ago;

  -- Decrease in the number of incidents of exposed or potentially exposed

     data due to inconsistent encryption and key management policies,

     compared to a year ago; and

  -- Decrease in the number of incidents of inaccessible data due to

     mismanagement of encryption keys, compared to a year ago.

Compared to all companies surveyed, the Best in Class supported 1.9X more keys with an estimated 34 percent lower total annual cost on a per-key basis. In addition, compared to one year ago:

  -- 81 percent of the Best-in-Class companies increased the total number of

     application types / use cases for encryption;

  -- 71 percent increased the total number of encryption keys under

     management; and

  -- 50 percent increased the number of locations (including multiple sites,

     branches, outsourcing partners, and partner extranets) using

     encryption.

For more information, please send your e-mails to swm@infothe.com.

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