Why Don’t Companies Just Encrypt All Their Data? It Isn’t So Simple
Organizations that enhance security with encryption find that it can come with a lot of trade-offs
.. Locking data away with encryption keeps it safe, but it comes with trade-offs. For one thing, companies can’t easily perform analysis or machine learning on encrypted data. So at a time when artificial intelligence and real-time data analysis is crucial for competitive advantage, executives must decide what to encrypt and for how long.
In addition, turning on encryption results in increased financial costs and performance impacts.
.. In the 1970s, though, mathematicians devised a more sophisticated method that was made easier with computers, called public key cryptography. This scheme allows people to exchange encrypted messages without sharing a secret key first.
.. encryption isn’t a silver bullet. Hackers can gain access to keys, making encryption worthless. And, before encrypted data can be searched or analyzed, it has to be decrypted first, requiring a company’s computers to work harder than usual.
When encryption is on by default, applications could be as much as 7% slower ..