Venafi Study: Consumers Conflicted About Encryption Backdoors – Business Wire (press release)

SALT LAKE CITY--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Venafi, the leading provider of machine identity protection, today announced the findings of a study that evaluated attitudes and opinions of 3,000 adult consumers from the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany on initiatives that would grant governments more access to private, encrypted data.

According to the study, half of consumers (51 percent) do not believe their government can protect their personal data, and nearly two-thirds of respondents (65 percent) suspect their government already abuses its powers to access the data of citizens. Additionally, 68 percent of respondents believe governments should not force private companies to hand over encrypted personal data without consumer consent.

The study also found that consumers are concerned about the impact encryption backdoors would have on their personal privacy. Sixty fire percent of respondents state that governments should not be able to force citizens to turn over personal data, such as the contents of mobile phones, social media, email and online activity, without consent.

The results of this research indicate that security and privacy are probably going to get a lot worse before they get better, said Jeff Hudson, CEO of Venafi. Its very clear that consumers are confused about what access to encrypted data will mean to their privacy, and its equally clear that governments dont understand how encryption backdoors will be used to undermine our global digital economy. The negative impact encryption backdoors will have on every aspect of security and privacy is tremendous.

Despite concerns regarding government abuse, many consumers remain conflicted over how encryption backdoors would impact both their privacy and national security:

Hudson continued: Giving governments access to encryption will not make us safer from terrorism in fact, the opposite is true. Most people dont trust the government to protect data and they dont believe the government is effective at fighting cybercrime. Its ironic that we believe we would be safer if governments were given more power to access private encrypted data because this will undermine the security of our entire digital economy.

Encryption backdoors create vulnerabilities that can be exploited by a wide range of malicious actors, including hostile or abusive government agencies. Billions of people worldwide rely on encryption to protect a wide range of critical infrastructure, including global financial systems, electrical grid and transportation systems, from cybercriminals who steal data for financial gain or espionage.

The study was conducted by One Poll and completed in July 2017. It analyzed responses from three thousand adult consumers from the United States, United Kingdom and Germany.

For more detailed information on the survey, please visit: https://www.venafi.com/blog/survey-results-consumers-skeptical-of-government-backdoors

About Venafi

Venafiis the cybersecurity market leader in machine identity protection, securing all connections and communications between machines. Venafi protects machine identity types by orchestrating cryptographic keys and digital certificates for SSL/TLS, IoT, mobile and SSH. Venafi provides global visibility of machine identities and the risks associated with them for the extended enterprise on premises, mobile, virtual, cloud and IoT at machine speed and scale. Venafi puts this intelligence into action with automated remediation that reduces the security and availability risks connected with weak or compromised machine identities while safeguarding the flow of information to trusted machines and preventing communication with machines that are not trusted.

With over 30 patents, Venafi delivers innovative solutions for the world's most demanding, security-conscious Global 5000 organizations, including the top five U.S. health insurers, the top five U.S. airlines, four of the top five U.S., U.K. and South African banks, and four of the top five U.S. retailers. For more information, visit http://venafi.com.

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Venafi Study: Consumers Conflicted About Encryption Backdoors - Business Wire (press release)