-- The top reasons for encryption are to prevent data breaches (55 percent), to protect the company's brand or reputation that could result from a breach (40 percent), to comply with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (29 percent) and to avoid having to notify customer or employees after a data breach occurs.

-- Regulations that have proven most influential in deciding to use encryption include various state and emerging federal requirements on data security breach notification (57 percent), the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (43 percent) and Sarbanes-Oxley (34 percent).

-- The types of data considered most important to be encrypted for storage and/or transmission are business confidential documents (57 percent), records containing intellectual property (56 percent), sensitive customer information (56 percent), accounting and financial information (41 percent) and employee information (35 percent). Interestingly, all customer information and consumer information scored a low 8 percent and 6 percent, respectively.

-- The top five types of personal information about a customer, consumer or employee that should be encrypted are health information (72 percent), sexual orientation (69 percent), Social Security number (67 percent), family members (66 percent) and work history (57 percent).

-- The bottom five types of personal information about a customer, consumer or employee that should be encrypted are e-mail (10 percent), home location and telephone (6 percent), educational background (5 percent), interests and preferences (2 percent) and gender (1 percent).