Re: Looking for advice on database encryption

Bill Moran wrote:
> The problem comes when the company head wants to search through the
> database to find out which employee has a specific SSN. He should
> be able to do so, since he has access to everything, but the logistics of
> doing so in a reasonable amount of time are rather complex and very
> time consuming. On a million rows with the SSN unencrypted, such a
> query would take less than a second with an appropriate index, but
> pulling those million rows into the application in order to decrypt
> each one and see if it matches can easily take a half hour or longer.
>
> That's where we're having difficulty. Our requirements are that the
> data must be strongly protected, but the appropriate people must be
> able to do (often complex) searches on it that complete in record
> time.
>

an index on the encrypted SSN field would do this just fine. if
authorized person needs to find the record with a specific SSN, they
encrypt that SSN and then look up the ciphertext in the database... done.