Re: Field level encryption and decryption APIs

Thanks Scott.

Jose

Scott Klement wrote:

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