Gaps in data security exist – often because security leaders are unaware of the problem or assume there are no solutions. These gaps contribute to the escalating costs of data breaches, reaching an all-time high of nearly $5M per breach in 2024 (source: IBM, Cost of a Data Breach 2024).

Data is the organization’s crown jewel in the digital landscape, embodying the most valuable and sensitive information crucial to a company’s operations, success, and competitive edge. Safeguarding this data in its various forms—text, numbers, video, etc.—and across its lifecycle is essential to maintaining business integrity, protecting customers, and ensuring regulatory compliance.

The mere exposure of sensitive data can result in companies facing significant financial losses, reputational harm, and disruptions to critical business functions.

Many enterprises employ numerous security layers and techniques to protect their data, assuming that their information is secure. However,  in today’s digital realm, even cutting-edge security solutions can create gaps through which data may leak and end up in the wrong hands. Unfortunately, many business leaders are unaware of this issue or believe there is no solution. That assumption is false.

Where Do Gaps in Encryption Leave You Exposed?

Encryption provides valuable protection, but modern, mainstream solutions only protect data in-transit and at-rest. What about data in-use, such as when it is queried or analyzed? With current methods, encrypted data isn’t accessible or able to be computed upon, analyzed, or queried. Therefore, it must be decrypted or made “in-clear,” creating critical data protection gaps.

Sophisticated threat actors know about data in-clear exposures and launch attacks targeting them. Even with strong perimeter defenses in place, when a company’s security is only as strong as its weakest link, these encryption gaps create opportunities for data leakage and put companies at significant risk. This also applies to data used for training or querying AI or Large

Language Models (LLMs). In this instance, the need for parallel processing requires data to be decrypted–significantly exposing organizations and deterring them from using such technologies for innovation.

Adding complexity to the problem, additional gaps occur when data transitions between states in its lifecycle. For example, as data moves from storage to processing, processing to analysis, analysis to interpretation, and finally to archival, it often must be decrypted, reformatted, or transformed. During these transitions, data is temporarily in-clear and susceptible to interception or unauthorized access.

Hop-by-Hop Encryption

Figure 1: The diagram below illustrates how traditional hop-by-hop encryption, referring to encryption of data in-transit and data at-rest, leaves gaps in data protection.​ First, data is decrypted for processing, analysis, and queries. Gaps also happen as data is in-clear during transitions from one stage to the next, including its transition to at-rest.

Such data transitions create multifaceted and complex security challenges. We can see in the diagram above that each decryption point (marked by red blocks) represents a potential attack vector, as data in motion between systems is vulnerable to interception. Again, these vulnerabilities are well-known to malicious actors, who target these transition points to gain unauthorized access to sensitive information.

From Awareness to Action: How to Close the Gaps

Security leaders must take two critical steps to address these data security gaps:
Step 1: Accept there are gaps in data protection.
Step 2: Identify and close them.
You may be asking, but how? Today, there is a viable solution to these data exposures that operates at the speed of business.

Imagine if your data could be protected throughout its lifecycle without interruption, eliminating the gaps in protection. A significant risk vector would be eliminated, and your risk of unauthorized access to sensitive data would be minimized.

Revolutionize Data Security with Continuous Encryption

What is needed—and missing from most organizations—is continuous encryption. Today, fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) is the sole method for continuous data encryption throughout the data lifecycle. Often hailed as the “holy grail” of encryption, FHE’s revolutionary potential lies in its ability to enable computations on encrypted data without decryption, ensuring secure processing and analysis while maintaining confidentiality at all stages.

Adding a layer of continuous encryption enhances, rather than replaces, existing encryption for data in-transit or at-rest. This additional encryption layer is the crucial missing link in closing data protection gaps left by traditional encryption methods, providing a comprehensive solution for safeguarding sensitive information across all states of use and transition.

This advanced encryption technology is not new. However, until recently, widespread adoption of FHE wasn’t considered a viable option due to excessive computational costs and performance limitations. That is all changing, thanks to a new solution, ready for business, that operates at the speed of digital.

DataKrypto’s FHE Innovation: the Missing Link

As shown in the image below, DataKrypto’s revolutionary FHE solutions provide continuous encryption throughout the data lifecycle without interruption, closing the gaps shown in Figure 1.

With our flagship product, FHEnom™, data is only in-clear when it is created or when an authorized user decrypts it with a key. ​

Figure 2: Data remains encrypted through processing and data transitions. It is not in-clear until the authorized user decrypts it.

The graphic below shows how data is first protected with FHE, which is transparent to encryption in-transit and encryption at-rest–resulting in a continuous encryption layer protecting data throughout its lifecycle. This layered approach ensures that the original plaintext remains protected throughout transmission and storage. (Eventually, we see FHE replacing encryption in motion and encryption at-rest, but for the time being, all can co-exist rather easily.)

DataKrypto’s innovative FHE solutions make continuous encryption at scale a reality—offering a powerful way to overcome gaps in data protection and eliminate the risk of high-stakes data breaches. DataKrypto offers the first and only encryption solution that protects all types of data throughout its lifecycle, including data-in-use, allowing modern users to work the way they are used to—at the speed of digital—supporting parallel processing needs of AI and LLM data without compromising performance, security, or utility.

Stay tuned for more insights to help you understand the risks and discover new strategies to address critical issues.

Not sure where to start? We can help!

Contact us today to begin your journey toward understanding how continuous encryption closes your data security gaps.