RE: Encrypt data - SQL Server 2000

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To: "'Nero, Nick'" <Nick.Nero@disney.com>, Eduardo.Ortiz@alderwoods.com, focus-ms@securityfocus.com
Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 13:08:43 -0500

Good suggestions, Nick. I'd add that if you *have to* encrypt columns or
rows due to regulatory requirements like HIPAA or if your business has the
$$ to support a truly robust solution, definitely look at Ingrian Networks
suite of encryption appliances. They're the best I seen so far in terms of
performance (hardware based) and range of applications - encrypt down to
row/column in a multitude of Db products, can front-end for legacy systems,
supports just about every algorithm in use, uses standard APIs or calls
(XML, MSCryptoAPI, JCE, PKCS #11), embedded CA, can trust other CAs. There
the best I've seen out there so far.

Fred Langston, CISSP
  Senior Principal Consultant
  W: 206.903.8147 x223 F: 206.903.1862 M: 425.765.3330
  Seattle, WA www.Guardent.com
________________________________________
G U A R D E N T
  Enterprise Security and Privacy Programs

-----Original Message-----
From: Nero, Nick [mailto:Nick.Nero@disney.com]
Sent: Thursday, January 15, 2004 2:09 PM
To: Eduardo.Ortiz@alderwoods.com; focus-ms@securityfocus.com
Subject: RE: Encrypt data - SQL Server 2000

Encrypting data on a database is tricky. If you must have table/row level
encryption, then it is really tough to find a decent product and performance
is abyssmal. I recently authored a document that proposes using Microsoft's
own EFS to encrypt the whole volume where the Database is. This solution
was easy, performed great (about 5-25% hit on performance compared to 400%
on DBCrypt) and best of all it is free. I would strongly recommend using
Windows 2003 server for your SQL2k since its version of EFS uses AES at
256bit. Otherwise you need to hack the reg on Win2k to enable 3DES
encryption. Either is not gonna get cracked by someone anytime soon. The
beauty of this solution is that you encrypt the database with the SQL
Service account so that only that account can read the data. That way even
an local admin on the box cannot access the data. You could even boot to a
NTFS boot disk and the data would be encrypted. This depends on proper key
management (as all crytpo plans do) so you have to ensure you use a domain
account or roaming profile so the encryption key can not be exploited
locally (see http://www.elcomsoft.com/aefsdr.html for more on this exploit)
and domain recovery agent policy. Still we feel it delivers extremely
secure databases, acceptable performance and zero cost.

We tested several products and I believe DBEncrypt (or maybe DbCrypt) was
one of them. They all were several thousand dollars per server (and that
was for a license of over 100 servers), and would require massive hardware
investments to compensate for the performance penalty. Like I said, If you
must have row/table level encryption to protect against other DBA's then you
are stuck. At that point I would say you should either limit who has SA
access, or more strongly background check those that do cause that level of
encryption will cost you far more. A DB on an encrypted drive with strong
application level security (ie, custom views), would only be breakable at
the app or by getting SA credentials. There are far easier targets out
there.

-----Original Message-----
From: Eduardo.Ortiz@alderwoods.com [mailto:Eduardo.Ortiz@alderwoods.com]

Sent: Thursday, January 15, 2004 1:02 PM
To: focus-ms@securityfocus.com
Subject: Encrypt data - SQL Server 2000

Hello,

We are implementing an Enterprise Data Warehouse. We already have data
regarding different business process. Now we need to include Payroll data in
our SQL Server (2000) database. Business users have specific security
requirements about this sensitive data. They want to secure the following
information:
* Annual employee salaries
* Commissions
* Wages
This information is stored in two tables and are three different columns. We
have already implemented a tight security schema for the server, database
and user groups (active directory), but business users want more security.
Now we are planning to encrypt the data (just these three
columns) in the database. I did not find any function in SQL Server to
encrypt data. I found a tool provided by Application Security Inc
(http://www.appsecinc.com) called DbEncrypt. Have you guys heard or worked
with tool? Do you any suggestion or recommendation to encrypt the data?

Thanks,
Eduardo Ortiz

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