A common and very real threat is that data stored on a PC will be accessed by unauthorized persons. The consequences of unauthorized access can include legal penalties (exposure of customer personally identifiable information), competitive disadvantage, embarrassment, fraud, extortion and such extremes as compromise of national security. The management of the platform data is a responsibility of the business. Data security solutions enable owners of data and applications to impose strict controls on who may access and use those assets.

IT managers have identified some common market requirements for protection of confidential data on PCs:

• Data may be in any format  
• Encryption should be transparent to the end user or to end user applications, meaning that the end user is not required to do something to ensure that data remains encrypted
• Anyone attempting to access encrypted data must first authenticate before access is allowed
• Data that is encrypted on a PC must be encrypted in backups made of the PC
• The employer must be able to recover encrypted data in the event that the responsible user is unavailable to decrypt it
• Encrypted data must be accessible in a networked environment