Six reasons why encryption vendors have a future – for now

The latest blog by Quocirca

The inclusion of BitLocker by Microsoft in Windows 7 is perhaps the biggest move yet in the on-going commoditisation of the encryption market.

As one CISO (chief information security officer) agreed at a recent IT security forum, when it comes to full disk encryption of Windows devices for the purposes of compliance, BitLocker is “a big enough tick in the box”.

Microsoft is not the only infrastructure vendor to be embedding encryption in its products. Many storage systems now come with encryption included, either at the hardware level (for example Seagate self-encrypting drives), as part of the management software (as is the case with BitLocker) or with on-demand storage services (e.g. EMC/Mozy off-site backup).

Encryption specialists have also become the acquisition targets of the larger security providers. Back in April, Symantec announced the purchase of two encryption vendors (PGP and GuardianEdge).

This does not just add encryption to Symantec’s already broad security portfolio but it will allow it to embed its own encryption into its storage products and services.

So is it the end of the road for encryption specialists? Not yet, and there are plenty of reasons why they can continue to thrive.

Bob Tarzey is analyst and director at Quocirca. You can read his blog in full here.