> Unless I mis-read you, I was left w/impression you suggest
> that encrypted DB keys were easily accessable as matter of
> fact.

> That's definately not the case.

Correct. I am glad you corrected that impression, it was
unintended.

> There are 3rd party add ons that handle the task (although,
> probably too pricey to make sense for FB users), and quite
> a few good papers on the subject.

Actually its not that expensive to have a FB db encrypted.
Just use BestCrypt (from Jetico), PGPDisk (from PGP) and
various other encrypted disk volume utilities. I think there
are also a few open source projects of this type.

There are other ways that may be more convenient, but these
are inexpensive and offer high quality encryption. You just
need an authorised person to load the volumes (supply the
key) before database access can start.

They will not encrypt the network traffic, but there are other
utilities that will do that if considered necessary.

> I probably should say DB encryption happens to be of major
> importance for me. Most of our work these days is medical.
> The fastest, slickest, fullest featured DB on the planet I
> couldn't use if there was no encryption. I understand this
> is not primary concern for many.

Care to mention what DB it is? Just curious.

The thing with security is; There is no absolute, just a
limit to the amount of time and money people are willing or
able to throw at it. If good security was easy then many
people would be out of a job. :-)

--
Geoff Worboys
Telesis Computing