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Where to put my diamond earrings? I stared intently at the safe in my hotel room. And once again I pondered what the right answer was. Do I take the few valuables I own and place them in the safe, figure out what code to use, hope I remember my code, and hope the safe actually works? Or should I just hide them among my other belongings and hope for the best?

(This isn’t just free-floating anxiety by the way. I was once at a conference where a locksmith had to blow up the safe of the keynote presenter.)

The key question is, are we really better off using the safe at all rather than hiding something valuable anywhere else in the room? Or leaving it on a lounge chair at the pool while we swim — under a towel, of course?

The safe is basically shouting out to everyone: HERE IS WHERE ALL OF MY VALUABLES ARE!

Which is exactly the point of pervasive encryption.

If you implement pervasive encryption, there will be no dilemma about your valuables; you will be encrypting everything and securing all your data, essentially making your entire hotel room the safe.

IBM Z pervasive encryption enables extensive encryption of data in flight and at rest to substantially simplify encryption and reduce costs associated with protecting data.

Only 2 percent of corporate data is currently encrypted, and hackers will target that 2 percent exclusively because they know that is exactly where the valuable personal data is. If you are a bad actor, why would you waste time with anything else?

With IBM z14, you can now encrypt everything. Pervasive encryption enables you to encrypt data at the database, data set and disk level, with no changes to applications. Each app will have an internal encryption-decryption mechanism, allowing you to apply cryptography without altering the app itself. So, the sensitive data basically does not have a target on its back.

Listen to Bank of New York Mellon’s thoughts:

You can learn much more about pervasive encryption and IBM Z at the upcoming IBM Systems Technical University, from April 30 to May 4 in Orlando.

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