We have a need to encrypt certain data on our Adabas DB. We are currently scouring the market to find suitable software solutions to meet this requirement. Has anyone got any comments regarding what solutions are available and what their relative benefits are :?:
ADABAS comes with built in ciphering-capabilities, did you check if this provides what you need (at no extra cost) ?
Ciphering, if my understanding is correct, works against a complete file. We are only interested in encryting a certain field in a file. Is this possible and if so how? If not - are there any solutions available which would allow us to encrypt only selected fields of our choice?
Correct, ciphering works on the file level, not on individual fields.
Shouldn’t be too difficult to implement something using UEXB and UEXA if it affects only a minor number of fields.
Another thought which might be helpfull: thinking about data encryption the question is where you do need the security: on the way to Adabas or for the data to be stored on disc ?
Adabas Ciphering is for the data on the disc (DATA) the user passed the readable data to Adabas along with a cipher code and Adabas will then store the data encrypted. That secures your data from somebody who has either access on the DATA files itself or via the nucleus to the files.
The idea to encrypt data in UEXA or UEXB is helpfull when the data should also be encrypted for its way to the nucleus. It can then be decrypted in UEX1 in the Adabas nucleus again to store it decrypted or you store it encrypted (maybe as a binary field ?).
And by the way when you start using Adabas Ciphering I would assume you need anyway a Userexit because then you have to pass a Ciphercode in the Adabas Control Block and that would mean to change the application program.
But when you change the application and the application requests the ciphercode from the user directly and does only move it to the control block but does not store it somewhere else then the ciphercode is no-where stored. Even Adabas does not store it. Each user can then use its own cipher code and the Adabas will only decrypt it correctly with the right cipher code.
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