Firms are increasingly turning to encryption technology to boost protection of sensitive data and reduce data security incidents, researchers noted today.

Aberdeen Group’s latest research found that the top 20 per cent of surveyed organisations had made "significant strides " in data protection compared to a year ago.

According to the poll, 82 per cent of respondents decreased the number of data security incidents due to inconsistent encryption and key management policies. In addition 72 per cent of firms said they increased their ability to provide reliable access to data by reducing mismanagement of encryption keys.

The research found that organisations were increasingly looking to deploy data encryption in enterprise-wide rollouts.

"It's clear that adopting a strategic approach to encryption and key management is enabling enterprises to increase the protection of data and operate more efficiently," said Derek Brink, vice president & research director, IT Security at Aberdeen Group, who developed the research.

"The trend being established by 'best-in-class' organisations is towards a comprehensive, managed approach to encryption and away from individual, point applications. These organisations are setting the direction for the rest of the industry to follow."

The Aberdeen Group's research, which was conducted on behalf of PGP, also found that 'best-in-class' organisations were 1.9 times more likely than other groups to take a data-centric approach to securing data. This approach, referred to as Enterprise Data Protection, focuses on securing the data itself rather than relying on network defenses.