Research reveals companies had made significant strides in data protection

Aberdeen’s latest research found that the top 20 percent of surveyed organizations had made significant strides in data protection compared to a year ago:

• 64% increased the total percentage of sensitive data identified
• 82% decreased the number of data security incidents due to inconsistent encryption and key management policies
• 72% increased their ability to provide reliable access to data by reducing mismanagement of encryption keys

According to the new research, these forward thinking organizations were 1.6 times more likely to take a strategic approach to data protection by adopting an enterprise-wide policy of encryption and key management.

The Aberdeen Group’s research also found that “best-in-class” organizations were 1.9 times more likely than other groups to take a data-centric approach to securing data. This approach, referred to as Enterprise Data Protection, focuses on securing the data itself rather than relying on network defenses.