Subject RE: [firebird-support] Tools for encription field in Firebird
Author Svein Erling Tysvær
>Hi all,
>
>I have a table with ddl : create table Tbl1(id int,dscp varchar(100))
>
>Is there a tool to encrypt data in field dscp? I only need to encrypt that field, not all field.

You can read a bit about encryption on http://www.firebirdsql.org/manual/fbmetasecur-solution.html or http://www.firebirdfaq.org/faq160/. I think the short answer is 'no, Firebird doesn't natively have encryption'. I suppose you could write a UDF to encrypt/decrypt your data, but then people with access to your database may be able to just use the decryption UDF to find the real value...

At my workplace, we encrypt (or obfuscate) some fields in our programs and only use Firebird for storage of the field (hence, Firebird knows nothing about the encryption). One drawback with encryption is that it limits use of indexes - it may be possible to use an index for exact match, but not for other things like BETWEEN, >=, LIKE or STARTING. Hence, think twice before encrypting fields in huge databases.

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