Encrypting in SQL Server 2005 to hide data for sysadmin?

microsoft.public.sqlserver.programming

16 Dec 2006 7:21 PM

jonas.berling

Hi!

Would it be possible to use encryption in SQL Server 2005 and make it
impossible for the sysadmins (incl. 'sa') to decrypt the data? We
thought of certificates protected by a password, but we would then have
to pass the password as a parameter to our stored procedures and all
the 'sa' needed to do was to start the profiler and he would indeed see
our not-so-secret-anymore-password. Storing the password in the
procedures would of course give us the same kind of problem.

Could we do something with permissions? Clever coding? 3rd party
products? Maybe we are missing something obvious? Or is it not
possible?!

We do not believe that encryption outside of the database is practical
in our solution, for many reasons.

/Jonas