Now that organizations have come to realize that the best way to protect their data is to encrypt, usage of various encryption technologies is on the rise. The challenge that many organizations face is that every platform they employ now provides access to some form of unique encryption technology that needs to be managed.
Aiming to provide IT organizations with a centralized approach to managing encryption across multiple platforms, HyTrust today announced an update to a HyTrust DataControl platform that now supports a range of both public clouds, including Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, as well as private cloud platforms, including VMware and hyperconvergence platforms from Nutanix and the VCE unit of EMC.
At the same time, HyTrust is also releasing an update to its HyTrust CloudControl access management software that adds support for analytics capabilities and tools for tracking system logs.
Fred Kost, senior vice president of marketing for HyTrust, says the encryption issue that IT organizations now have to contend with is that the public and private cloud platforms they support have their own encryption capabilities, each of which come with their own encryption key management schemes.
HyTrust DataControl provides a centralized approach to encryption key management that Kost says can be more consistently applied across multiple platforms.
“We now live in a multi-cloud world,” says Kost.
Of course, while encryption is now being employed more than ever, it’s not a panacea to IT security. If cybercriminals gain access to an endpoint that has permission to view encrypted data, they can see any and all data whether it’s encrypted or not.
But when it comes to data in transit or data that is at rest on a server, encrypting that data should now be routine. That may add a certain amount of overhead in terms of processing requirements and the processes required to manage encryption keys. But as the number of regulations that require data to be encrypted increases, there really is no alternative. In fact, in the not-too-distant future, not encrypting sensitive data is more than likely going to be deemed reckless by any number of regulatory bodies, and stiff penalties for not being so will be attached.