SQL Server 2005 brings some great new encryption features along with it, but many people will be stuck with SQL Server 2000 for a long time. After all, we still get questions about SQL Server 6.5 once in awhile, so I'm guessing people will still be running SQL 2000 in 2015.
But encryption is one of those things that many people want. Or at least their clients want implemented to protect their data. With breeches of security being reported almost weekly, it makes sense to try and encrypt data where necessary and protect one of your company's most valuable assets.
One of our most popular authors, and encryption guru, Michael Coles, has been working on an encryption toolkit. He first wrote about this in his Free Encryption article and is currently working on a longer series to better explain how to use and deploy encryption.
He's also written a free toolkit that you can use on your SQL Server 2000 servers and in your applications. And now he's looking for DBA's and SQL developers to help test SQL 2000 encryption and regular expression tools for the upcoming series on SQLServerCentral.
If you are interested, drop me a line (sjones @ sqlservercentral.com) and we'll get you setup. Let me know how you want to use it, if you've used encryption before, and what's your favorite color. Hint: purples get precedence:)
The tools are extended stored procedures, stored procedures and user-defined functions that perform the following functions:
- AES (128, 192, or 256 bit) encryption
- DES (56 bit) encryption
- 3DES (3x56 bit) encryption
- Blowfish (32 to 448 bit) encryption
- SHA (256, 384, 512 bit) hashing
- Regular expression matching, searching and splitting (with group sub-captures)
The tools are designed to provide automated secure encryption key management via Master Key and Local Key Vault tables. It is designed to perform similarly to (but not exactly like) the new T-SQL symmetric encryption tools in SQL 2005.
Michael needs feedback on usability, features, and recommendations on additional features to add from the testers.