Encryption: More and more companies use it, despite nasty tech headaches

Use of encryption to protect business data continues to increase, but managing the technology involved continues to be a headache.

Just over a third (36 percent) of organisations said they now have an enterprise-wide encryption strategy in place, a number that has been steadily rising from the 15 percent reported a decade ago, according to a survey.

The figure hides some significant international variations: 59 percent of German companies claimed to have an encryption policy which is applied consistently across the organization, compared to 43 percent in the US, 35 percent in the UK, and a mere 25 percent in Mexico. By industry, financial services, healthcare, and pharmaceuticals are among the biggest users of encryption.