What is database encryption, and why is it important to develop database encryption solutions? How do regulations, such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), raise the importance of data encryption for some organizations?
Even if data exploitation is not an issue (which chances are it is an issue) a database can be taken down and even become unusable. At my work someone connected to a database and changed the permissions so no-one had permission to access it. The database had to be restored from a previous backup to give everyone access again. This could have been avoided if the access permissions were set before the database was hijacked. Even with good permissions set on a database though, the database can be hacked into more easily if the files can be accessed and there is no encryption. Data that is stored as plain text can be read with a simple text editor. According to the security rule in HIPAA, data transmitted over open networks are required to have some sort of encryption so if the data is intercepted it is unreadable. Some hospitals in close proximity communicate using microwave antennas. Encrypted data would need to be transmitted in this case as well since anyone with a receiver has access to the packets that are being transmitted. Encryption is the process in which plain text data is encoded into unreadable form for anyone but those who have special knowledge of the data. This special knowledge is usually called a cipher. The cipher is used to convert the encrypted data back into readable form.