I can imagine a couple of scenarios where no physical access to the drive is required for it to be useful. It's not like you're always on the machine which has

I can imagine a couple of scenarios where no physical access to the drive is required for it to be useful. It's not like you're always on the machine which has the key in memory or on storage, but the sensitive data could be accessed anyway, for example through a share. "Encryption at rest protects companies against the least common—and trickiest—attack vector: physical theft of hard drives" is a pretty odd view to see it if you're into security, as these guys are.