• According to what I found on the internet and tests, the lowest permission is CONTROL on a certificate and only REFERENCES on a symetric key. Then user can't drop or modify the certifacte and key but still is able to turn off keys management on the certificate and set a password, but maybe I missed something.

    "Overview of encryption and types of keys, the key hierarchy, key management, encrypting data, encrypting a database (TDE) and Extensible Key Management (EKM)."

    http://technet.microsoft.com/en-US/sqlserver/gg429824.aspx