Hello,
Does anyone have experience writing rpg code that uses the Cryptographic
Services APIs (Qc3DecryptData, Qc3EncryptData) to achieve database
field level encryption/decryption?
Frankly, the difficult part of cryptography isn't encrypting or
decrypting. The APIs you mention, or the _CIPHER MI builtin, both can do
the job quite nicely.
The hard part of cryptography is KEY MANAGEMENT! How do you keep the
cryptographic keys secure? Remember, anyone who has access to those keys
can easily decrypt anything you've encrypted. You have to keep them
separate and secure. You have to be able to back them up. You have to be
ensure that they'll always be available when you need decryption -- for
example, 10 years from now, if you need to access encrypted records, will
you still have the key?
Anyway... Carsten Flensburg wrote a very nice (but by no means
exhaustive) seven article series about using the cryptographic services
APIs. The following links (to Carsten's articles) require a membership
with the System iNetwork, but a free (associate) membership will work:
http://www.iseriesnetwork.com/article.cfm?id=51236
http://www.iseriesnetwork.com/article.cfm?id=51786
http://www.iseriesnetwork.com/article.cfm?id=51863
http://www.iseriesnetwork.com/article.cfm?id=51962
http://www.iseriesnetwork.com/article.cfm?id=52017
http://www.iseriesnetwork.com/article.cfm?id=52119
http://www.iseriesnetwork.com/article.cfm?id=52224
Good luck
