A group of American and European mathematicians and cryptographers have uncovered a significant flaw in the encryption method currently used by banks, online shopping sites and e-mail services to protect sensitive data.

Although there is a lot of focus these days on data breaches that result from the activities of cyber-criminals and other digital miscreants, in truth the majority of data breaches are caused by simple negligence.

There are not nearly as many IT organizations using encryption as there should be. But among the organizations that do, an interesting problem is emerging: Various database systems have different encryption schemas that all come with their own management framework.