Best way to encrypt certain fiels in SQL Server 2008?

Posted by Josh on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Josh
Published on 2010-05-25T22:12:38Z Indexed on 2010/05/26 2:41 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 341

Filed under:

.NET

|

sql

|

database

|

encryption

I'm writing a .net web app that will read and write information to a SQL 2008 backend database. Some of this information will be highly confidential in nature so I want to encrypt certain data elements. I dont want to use TDE or any full-database encryption for performance reasons. My main concern is protecting this sensitive data as a last resort against a SQL injection or even a database server compromise. My question is what is the best way to do this to preserve performance? Is it faster to use the SQL2008 encryption functions such as EncryptByKey, or would it be faster to encrypt and decrypt the data in the .NET web app itself using a symmetric key stored in the secure web.config and store the encrypted values in the DB?

© Stack Overflow or respective owner

Related posts about .NET

Apt-Get Update: failure to fetch; can't connect to any sources

as seen on Ask Ubuntu - Search for 'Ask Ubuntu'
I realize there are dozens of "apt-get update: failure to fetch" questions (I read through all I could find), but my present circumstance is unique to 12.04 and it affects all sources; not just launchpad. Additionally, I've tried several different servers in Europe and the U.S. as well as the "main… >>> More
12.04: Apt-Get Update: failure to fetch; can't connect to any sources

as seen on Ask Ubuntu - Search for 'Ask Ubuntu'
I realize there are dozens of "apt-get update: failure to fetch" questions (I read through all I could find), but my present circumstance is unique to 12.04 and it affects all sources; not just launchpad. Additionally, I've tried several different servers in Europe and the U.S. as well as the "main… >>> More
What's New in ASP.NET 4

as seen on Geeks with Blogs - Search for 'Geeks with Blogs'
The .NET Framework version 4 includes enhancements for ASP.NET 4 in targeted areas. Visual Studio 2010 and Microsoft Visual Web Developer Express also include enhancements and new features for improved Web development. This document provides an overview of many of the new features that are included… >>> More
.NET Reflector 6, .NET Reflector Pro, TestDriven.NET, .NET 4.0 and Mono

as seen on Simple Talk - Search for 'Simple Talk'
By now you may well have noticed that .NET Reflector 6 and .NET Reflector Pro are out in the wild. The official launch happened today, although we actually put the software out last Thursday as part of a phased release plan to ensure that everything went smoothly today which, so far, it seems to have… >>> More
Redmine on Apache2 with Passenger issue

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
I installed Redmine and run it in Apache2 with the Passenger module. Apache2 boots, Passenger module gets loaded and the Redmine welcome page is shown, however when trying to login or navigate to other parts of the Redmine site, the browser keeps loading and loading and loading forever, although the… >>> More

Related posts about sql

SQL SERVER – Concat Strings in SQL Server using T-SQL – SQL in Sixty Seconds #035 – Video

as seen on SQL Authority - Search for 'SQL Authority'
Concatenating string is one of the most common tasks in SQL Server and every developer has to come across it. We have to concat the string when we have to see the display full name of the person by first name and last name. In this video we will see various methods to concatenate the strings. SQL… >>> More
SQL SERVER – Concat Function in SQL Server – SQL Concatenation

as seen on SQL Authority - Search for 'SQL Authority'
Earlier this week, I was delivering Advanced BI training on the subject of “SQL Server 2008 R2″. I had great time delivering the session. During the session, we talked about SQL Server 2010 Denali. Suddenly one of the attendees suggested his displeasure for the product. He said, even though… >>> More
Error with SQL Server Setup 2012 on Windows 2012

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
I am trying to install SQL Server on Windows 2012. I was able to finally get the wizard up and running after making some changes on the server, but now it fails no matter what I do with the following error: TITLE: SQL Server Setup failure. SQL Server Setup has encountered the following error: … >>> More
How can I detect which version of SQL (eg SQL 2008 or SQL Azure)

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I need to detect which version of SQL I am dealing with to perorm various tasks, I need specifically detect if I am on SQL 2008 or SQL Azure. How can I do this with detection code written in SQL? >>> More
Nested SQL Select statement fails on SQL Server 2000, ok on SQL Server 2005

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Here is the query: INSERT INTO @TempTable SELECT UserID, Name, Address1 = (SELECT TOP 1 [Address] FROM (SELECT TOP 1 [Address] FROM [UserAddress] ua INNER JOIN UserAddressOrder uo ON ua.UserID = uo.UserID WHERE ua.UserID = u.UserID ORDER BY uo.AddressOrder ASC) q ORDER BY AddressOrder… >>> More