Big organizations don't trust individuals enough to make them the single point of failure for encryption. Most often, these organizations run key servers that h

Big organizations don't trust individuals enough to make them the single point of failure for encryption. Most often, these organizations run key servers that have the actual key, and provide the key based on some form of auth (usually Active Directory). If the user forgets their AD password, its an easy reset; and if they leave the company or something, their data is easily recoverable. This sort of "encryption in the sky" approach is available to consumers too. There are products by most of the big encryption vendors (like http://voltage.com/vsn/ http://voltage.com/vsn/) that make it easy for a user to encrypt their data without putting themselves at risk for data loss.