What are the main challenges and costs of implementing hardware encryption in your organization?

1 Compatibility issues

One of the challenges of hardware encryption is ensuring compatibility with your existing hardware and software infrastructure. Depending on the type and level of encryption, you may need to upgrade your devices, adapters, cables, drivers, or firmware to support the encryption. For example, if you want to use self-encrypting drives (SEDs), you may need to replace your old hard disks or SSDs with compatible ones. You may also need to check if your operating system, backup software, or recovery tools can work with the encrypted data.

2 Management complexity

Another challenge of hardware encryption is managing the encryption keys and policies across your organization. Encryption keys are the codes that enable access to the encrypted data. If you lose or compromise the keys, you may lose the data as well. Therefore, you need to have a secure and reliable system to generate, store, distribute, and revoke the keys. You also need to define and enforce the encryption policies, such as who can access the data, when, and how. You may need to use a central management console or a third-party service to simplify and automate these tasks.

3 Performance impact

Although hardware encryption is generally faster than software encryption, it may still have some impact on the performance of your devices and network. For instance, encrypting and decrypting large amounts of data may consume more CPU and memory resources, slowing down your system. Encrypting and decrypting data over the network may also increase the latency and bandwidth usage, affecting the speed and quality of your communication. You may need to optimize your hardware configuration and network settings to minimize the performance impact.

4 Cost implications

Implementing hardware encryption may also entail some costs for your organization. These costs may include the initial investment in purchasing or upgrading the encryption devices or chips, the ongoing maintenance and support fees, the licensing or subscription fees for the encryption software or service, and the potential costs of data loss or recovery in case of encryption failures or breaches. You may need to weigh these costs against the benefits of hardware encryption, such as improved security, compliance, and efficiency.

5 Training requirements

Finally, hardware encryption may require some training for your staff and users. You may need to educate them on the benefits and risks of hardware encryption, the best practices and procedures for using and managing it, and the troubleshooting and recovery steps in case of problems. You may also need to provide them with the tools and resources to access and handle the encrypted data securely and conveniently. You may need to allocate some time and budget for the training and awareness programs.

6 Future trends

Hardware encryption is not a static technology. It is constantly evolving and improving to meet the changing needs and demands of the market and the users. Some of the future trends that may affect hardware encryption include the adoption of new standards and protocols, such as AES-256 or TPM 2.0, the integration of biometric authentication or quantum cryptography, and the emergence of new threats and vulnerabilities, such as side-channel attacks or ransomware. You may need to keep up with these trends and update your hardware encryption strategy accordingly.

7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?