An overview of the column level SQL Server encryption

An overview of the column level SQL Server encryption

This article gives an overview of column level SQL Server encryption using examples.

Introduction

Data security is a critical task for any organization, especially if you store customer personal data such as Customer contact number, email address, social security number, bank and credit card numbers. Our main goal is to protect unauthorized access to data within and outside the organization. To achieve this, we start by providing access to relevant persons. We still have a chance that these authorized persons can also misuse the data; therefore, SQL Server provides encryption solutions. We can use these encryptions and protect the data.

It is a crucial aspect in classifying the data based on the information type and sensitivity. For example, we might have customer DOB in a column and depending upon the requirement, and we should classify it as confidential, highly confidential. You can read more about in the article SQL data classification – Add sensitivity classification in SQL Server 2019.

We have many encryptions available in SQL Server such as Transparent Data Encryption (TDE), Always Encrypted, Static data masking and Dynamic Data Masking. In this article, we will explore column level SQL Server encryption using symmetric keys.

 

作者:Chuck Lu    GitHub