Blog Entry – Prioritizing Key Management When Considering the Cloud

One of the trends that I’ve noted when talking with customers is the desire to get cryptographic keys under better central management in anticipation of the cloud. At face value, one might wonder what the connection might be. Why build a key management plan before rolling out a cloud computing strategy?

It turns out that there are several good reasons:

1. There’s no better time to build out a strategy for managing keys. Once an IT organization evaluates where their data exists and where the encryption lives, the more important better management tools become. It makes a lot of sense to get the existing key management issues under control as a precursory step before moving applications and data to the cloud.
2. There’s a lot of concerns about cloud security models, especially with respect to who holds the keys. One of encryption’s central use cases is being...

Part of the role that Symantec takes within the security community is to work together with research groups to identify and understand the trends that shape the market. As part of this effort, Symantec is continuing the work started between PGP Corporation and Ponemon Institute to examine the usage of encryption and how it has been evolving over the years.

Ponemon Institute recently completed the “2010 US Enterprise Encryption Trends Report”, published November 2010.  This report surveyed 964 US I.T. workers in various job functions and asked about their insights into their usage of encryption technology in order to protect information assets.

One of the most interesting insights that emerged from this report is that the reason for making the decision to deploy encryption has undergone a shift. In the past, the primary driver has always been in response to a data breach. In the 2010 report, the respondents noted that...

Bryan Gillson - Senior Director Product Management

Update: As of September 9, 2010, source code downloads of PGP software are again available.

Encryption has always been about trust. Questions about who you trust and who you distrust, are critical to determining whether (and how) to encrypt your data. Of course, trust-related questions go beyond just specific threats and extend directly to the selection of an encryption vendor.

This is why, since its founding, PGP Corporation has made its source code publicly available for cryptographic review. We feel that the ability for the public to study our source code and personally confirm the quality, validity, and security of our cryptographic implementations has been a key reason for the trust placed in PGP Corporation and our products. This belief has been reinforced by many customers across the spectrum: corporate, individual, educational...

Brian Tokuyoshi - Senior Product Marketing Manager

Putting together a good data protection strategy shouldn’t depend on whether or not your security vendor  chooses to support it. However, based on the adoption of the Apple Macintosh in the enterprise, a lot of IT organizations are getting caught off guard. They’re finding that the vendor they chose to protect their Windows data doesn’t offer any solutions to address Mac OS X users, thus creating a gap in their data protection strategy for an important and growing segment of their user population.

The rise in the use of Mac OS X in business is attributable to a number of factors, including grass roots adoption by individual users, growing consumerization corporate IT, and the acquisition of new companies that have an existing Mac installed base. It’s not practical to just leave these...