Built-in facility to encrypt column data

Digg This!     StumbleUpon     Del.icio.us

RELATED CONTENT Kevin Kline - Monitoring/Administration Publisher residing on a different domain SQL Mail troubleshooting Installing SQL Server client tools on Windows XP Pro Incorrect drive letter assignments Installing SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition on Windows XP Identifier field in Microsoft's SQL Server Getting scheduled DTS packages to run Performance problems after installing Windows Service Pack 4 Improve performance by spreading data Difficulties transferring stored procedures and triggers SQL Server Security Password cracking tools for SQL Server Meet compliance requirements with improved database security practices Hardening the network and OS for SQL Server security Securing the server and database in SQL Server SQL Server security made simple and sensible Blog: Protect your databases from the internal threat Setting up SQL Server Service Broker for secure communication The keys to database backup protection for SQL Server Understanding transparent data encryption in SQL Server 2008 The fine line between not encrypting your databases and breach notification

RELATED GLOSSARY TERMS Terms from Whatis.com − the technology online dictionary data corruption  (SearchSQLServer.com) data hiding  (SearchSQLServer.com)

RELATED RESOURCES 2020software.com, trial software downloads for accounting software, ERP software, CRM software and business software systems Search Bitpipe.com for the latest white papers and business webcasts Whatis.com, the online computer dictionary

There is no documented facility for encrypting column data in SQL Server 2000. You can encrypt other elements of SQL Server, however, including:

• Login and application role passwords stored in SQL Server
• Any data sent between the client and the server as network packets
• Stored procedure definitions
• User-defined function definitions
• View definitions
• Trigger definitions
• Default definitions
• Rule definitions

If you're willing to get into the world of undocumented functions and such, then you might want to consider pwd_encrypt( ) and pwd_compare( ). You can use pwd_encrypt to store an encrypted value into a column. You will never know what the value is, nor can you view it. But you can compare values to it, such as in a WHERE clause, using the pwd_compare function. I do NOT recommend this approach!