Security and IT professionals in Hong Kong continue to outpace the global average when it comes to the adoption of enterprise-wide encryption, with particular focus on cloud services and applications, as well as containers. This and other findings are highlighted in the Entrust 2021 Hong Kong Encryption Trends Study, part of the 16th annual multinational survey by the Ponemon Institute. The study reports on the cybersecurity challenges organisations face today, and how and why organizations deploy encryption.

Identified threats and priorities

Specifically, 54% of respondents in Hong Kong now have a consistently applied encryption plan/strategy, well ahead of the global average (50%) for the second year running. Also for the second straight year in Hong Kong, the biggest threats that might result in the exposure of sensitive data were employee mistakes (47% vs. 53% globally) and system or process malfunction, which increased from 30% to 36% (vs. 31% globally).

Currently, around six-in-ten (59%) organizations surveyed in Hong Kong transfer data to the cloud. This is up from 55% last year, but is expected to surge with an additional 24% planning to do so in the next 12-24 months. Similarly, just over half of organizations surveyed deploy encryption for public cloud services (51% vs. 46% globally) and Bring Your Own Key (BYOK) management support was cited as the fastest growing feature of cloud encryption solutions by 53%, up from 48% last year.

Furthermore, nearly half (47%) of responding IT professionals in Hong Kong deploy encryption for containers, the highest rate worldwide, up from 40% last year and far above the global average of 32%.

The growing role of hardware security modules (HSMs)

For Hong Kong IT professionals, the pain associated with key management is increasing, with two-thirds reporting a high rate of overall pain associated with managing keys or certificates. This is up from 61% last year and higher than this year’s global average of 56%.

Similar to last year, the top factor driving this is "no clear ownership" (74% vs. 64% globally), with inadequate key management tools in second place (58% vs. 46% globally).

Another factor to consider is the lower rates of hardware security module (HSM) adoption, with 40% of respondent organizations in Hong Kong using HSMs (vs. 49% globally). The fact that this is up from 34% last year, making it the 2nd highest increase worldwide, suggests that the benefits of HSMs – including the ability to help with key management - are being recognized in the region.

In fact, Hong Kong results indicate that the importance of HSMs to encryption or key management strategy is expected to increase from 63% to 79% over the next 12 months. Similarly, with the increased focus on cloud migration, when using HSMs to protect cloud applications a higher percentage of responding organizations in Hong Kong than any other region prefers to use HSMs they own and operate (54% vs 41% globally).

Over the next 12 months, respondent organizations anticipate greater use of HSMs for several use cases, led by TLS/SSL going from 38% to 78% year over year, the largest expected increase of any use case. Other leading use cases include database encryption (increasing from 25% to 45%), blockchain applications (from 13% to 30%) and payment transaction processing or payment credential issuing/provisioning (expected to increase from 26% to 40%).

"Organizations in Hong Kong are increasing their use of the cloud and containers as IT and security professionals focus on the risks associated with employee mistakes and system or process malfunctions. As they strive to protect customer information and intellectual property and to comply with data privacy mandates, organizations on average now use more than eight different products that perform encryption. This brings new challenges associated with discovering where sensitive data resides, deploying encryption technology and training users to use encryption appropriately," said Michael Tai, Area Vice President, Greater China, Entrust. "Key management still causes a high level of pain, due primarily to concerns about key ownership and inadequate key management tools. As they deploy encryption for databases, containers and cloud applications, organizations in the region seek encryption solutions that offer scalability, tamper resistance with an HSM, but as cloud use increases, organizations prefer to own and manage the HSMs used to protect cloud applications."

Additional Information:

Report: 2021 Hong Kong Encryption Trends Study

2021 Global Encryption Trends Study methodology

The 2021 Global Encryption Trends Study, based on research by the Ponemon Institute, captures how organizations around the world are dealing with compliance, increased threats, and the implementation of encryption to protect their business-critical information and applications. 6,610 IT professionals were surveyed across multiple industry sectors in 17 countries/regions: Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Mexico, Middle East (which is a combination of respondents located in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates), Netherlands, the Russian Federation, Spain, Southeast Asia, South Korea, Sweden, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

About Entrust Corporation

Entrust keeps the world moving safely by enabling trusted identities, payments and data protection. Today more than ever, people demand seamless, secure experiences, whether they’re crossing borders, making a purchase, accessing e-government services or logging into corporate networks. Entrust offers an unmatched breadth of digital security and credential issuance solutions at the very heart of all these interactions. With more than 2,500 colleagues, a network of global partners, and customers in over 150 countries, it’s no wonder the world’s most entrusted organizations trust us. For more information, visit www.entrust.com.