Mission-critical data that goes missing could result in legal liabilities and regulatory compliance violations -- an intolerable situation. One would expect that security-conscious organizations would include tape encryption as a standard security defense. Unfortunately, this hypothesis simply isn't true. In a survey of 388 storage professionals, ESG found that only 7 percent of users reported that they always encrypt their backup data while 60 percent said that they never do. There will likely be many more instances of lost tapes, which may lead to embarrassing public disclosures and expensive notification efforts.