"Encryption and privacy is not the same thing," said Nick Savvides, Symantec APAC cybersecurity strategy manager.
Encryption is a privacy "enhancing tool", Savvides went on to explain, while privacy is more about handling what information is collected, how the collected information is handled, and what other data can be derived from it. The two are often confused because they are related: Encryption is used to maintain privacy.
Savvides said that unfortunately most websites do not use encryption, highlighting the company's most recent Internet Threat Security Report, which revealed that 97 percent of active websites do not have any basic security and 75 percent have unpatched vulnerabilities, with 16 percent of those being critical.