The Price You Pay
If this sounds like a lot of work, it is. You can't encrypt your database in a vacuum. Don't forget that applications access this data, so you have to consider how encrypting it will affect them. An app for accessing credit-card information still must be able to get that information in a readable format.
And though encrypting data is a logical next step in better securing your enterprise, it carries a high price: application performance can suffer, database recovery takes longer because you have to decrypt encrypted fields, and troubleshooting bad queries becomes trickier because the data in the fields is in its encrypted form. Still, the payoff is big: You can sleep at night knowing that even if an intruder does find a way into your network, he or she couldn't steal sensitive employee or customer information.
Don MacVittie is an application engineer at WPS Resources. Write to him at [email protected].
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How to Encrypt Database Data
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