Her biggest concern is losing control of highly confidential data. “Someone has to look at that image. Who is looking at it? Who gets access to it? How does that impact your customers who have given that trust to you?” Shea said, asking what happens if the data does get into the wrong hands. “Did you just lose that customer if they end up suing you? Is China going to end up with your secret formula? What is at fault there? What are the access controls? The adversaries, the bad guys, they always find a way around it.”

Richard Blech, CEO of encryption company XSOC, said the encryption backdoor compliance efforts “are not feasible or practical at all. Once the door is open, the door is open to everybody. Australia is heavily pushing toward some kind of backdoor or at least the ability to eavesdrop. They may be the first to break through, long before anyone in the EU even gets close,” Blech said. 

One approach for enterprise CISOs is to create their own secure communication channels with customers and business partners in impacted geographies, Blech said, for example, using an enterprise-grade VPN to tunnel into a secure area in the enterprise’s on prem environment. Then all communications could theoretically be protected.