Once organizations hit a certain size, they tend to develop their own momentum in terms of their growth, day-to-day business practices, but also their security stance. Unless there’s a significant commitment to the latter that’s baked-in early in the company or organization’s nascent stages, the attack surface that it will present is large and will be difficult to oversee.

In most organizations, there’s also a reasonable degree of outsourcing which opens all sorts of security considerations, plus any merger or acquisition further complicates the picture over which the security teams need to manage. This already stressful situation becomes more so if an organization experiences a breach, as any data mismanagement or incursion can have massive consequences. These may include public outcry, monetary fines, and loss of intellectual property.

Every industry today requires protection for its business-critical systems and should be using, by default, data encryption, privileged access management, code signing (if there’s any development function), key management, unified access management policies and much more. Once just the remit of the more data-sensitive industries, such as financial services, and government departments, now every business needs to think safety first.

From safety, comes trust – that’s trust between companies and their partners, and companies and their customers. Having the right attitudes toward cybersecurity, encryption and data protection at every layer of the organization’s activities has to become part of the fabric. Once that’s achieved, trust can build.

If every application is to a certain extent data-sensitive, applications and services of all types need protecting by advanced cryptographic frameworks. Once a data breach takes place, or an organization suffers an internal attack, there’s more at stake than the IP (intellectual property) of the organization.

In an interconnected world, reputations can be built and destroyed in seconds, so keeping security frameworks up to date, and practices well-rehearsed means that companies can avoid losing the confidence placed in them.

For this reason, applications that need cryptographic processes to get access to sensitive information should be executed within a fully-protected environment. That environment needs to extend not just to the limits of the internal network, but the environment needs to extend out into cloud deployments and edge installations: in short, the entirety of the organization’s data reach.

Databases, application code, development activity, cold and warm storage, inter-site traffic, cloud services, and so forth need protecting by the virtual confines of tamper-resistant shields of high-end encryption platforms.

Thankfully, there are solutions on the market that can be deployed that don’t rely on-legacy technologies. Any business or organization can benefit from enterprise-wide deployment of security and encryption that will safely underpin digital transformation. As their new profile emerges, it builds confidence with every institution it interacts with.

In the future, technologies like those emerging now such as interconnected smart devices (IoT) and blockchain will come to figure more highly. It’s therefore interesting to note the distinction between those suppliers of this type of encryption management platforms that are future-ready, with open systems ready to roll, and those that offer a purely closed environment.

Falling firmly into the first category is nCipher Security, an Entrust Datacard company. nCipher’s market-leading hardware security modules (HSMs) empower organizations by delivering trust, integrity and control to business critical information and applications. By offering the industry standard in encryption management nCipher provides safe and reliable protection to businesses and organizations of any size. With a platform that’s ready to take on the challenges of the future that are starting to happen now, the company sits uniquely in a market-leading position. You can learn more about what nCipher offers to enterprises, private and public sector institutions, and companies of all sizes – click to read more on Tech Wire Asia.