In fact, Robin Giang, a Hong Kong-based analyst for IDC Asia/Pacific, estimates that less than a quarter of businesses in Australia are using encryption of some sort for their company's data. "Encryption tools listed here include [but are not exclusive to] the usage of PKI technology," says Giang.
In Australia the proportion of companies using encryption technology for their data is at about 21 percent, which is similar to Asia-Pacific's rate of 19 percent.
"Overall, the large enterprises (about 34 percent) are using encryption tools more so than the 'SMEs' (small and medium enterprises)," explains Giang. " Also, the Banking/Finance sector (62 percent), in particular, is using encryption technology more so than their industry counterparts."
Other areas of major encryption usage in Australia include the distribution and manufacturing market segments, says Giang.
Nevertheless, while business acceptance of PKI technology has been slow to take off the Australian Federal government has been one of the strong adopters in this country.
Back in December of 1997, the Prime Minister issued an industry statement called "Investing for Growth", which, among other things, outlined his vision for bringing government services online. Effectively, the statement allowed the government to develop a national framework for the authentication of users of electronic online services.
As part of this strategy it was decided that Commonwealth agencies would use public key infrastructure for electronic transactions, including e-commerce for the exchange of government information as well as for the procurement of services for the government. This strategy was called Gatekeeper.
