Data Encryption

SQL Data Encryption Techniques

With several recent high profile hacks many companies, especially the ones that operate in healthcare space or retail space are worried about whether they are HIPPA and PCI compliant.

Most organizations have taken steps to ensure physical security and have deployed robust tools such as expensive firewalls, SSL and digital code signing techniques.

But, often the data at the database layer is left un-encrypted and even though there are various options to encrypt the data, there is often confusion about the optimal strategy.

Today, we will briefly discuss various options available to encrypt the data at the database level.

1. Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) - first introduced in SQL 2008.
2. Custom Encryption - Programmatically encrypting sensitive data before saving to database.
3. Using SQL Views / Triggers without having to modify your code.
4. Using third party tools that encrypt and decrypt the data seamlessly using encryption keys.
5. Drive Level encryption - Using third party tools or built in OS level encryption you can encrypt the drive where the data is stored.

Options 2 thru 5 are self-explanatory, in the next post we will discuss TDE in more detail.

Thank you.