Encryption

Technical Article

Column-Level Encryption in SQL Server

  • Article

Beginning with SQL Server 2005, column-level encryption and decryption capabilities were made available within the database, providing a solution for situations where one-off types of data need to be secured beyond your existing authorization, authentication or firewall settings. This article provides an overview and example of securing a column using native SQL Server cryptography functions.

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2011-02-18

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External Article

SQL Server Encryption Symmetric vs. Asymmetric Keys

  • Article

I need to encrypt my data within SQL Server and I plan on using the built-in encryption functionality in SQL Server 2005 and 2008. However, I'm looking at symmetric and asymmetric key algorithms and while I see information saying to use symmetric keys, I don't understand why. What's the difference between the two and why is a symmetric key algorithm preferred over the asymmetric key ones?

2009-12-02

3,414 reads

External Article

Using authenticators with SQL Server encryption

  • Article

Authenticators are additional data that gets encrypted along with the data to be stored in an encrypted manner. When it comes to decrypt the data, if the right authenticator isn't specified, SQL Server doesn't return the data in the decrypted form. Rather, a NULL value is returned, just as if the wrong key was used.

2009-06-12

2,384 reads

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Question of the Day

Rebuilding All Indexes

I have added a few indexes to one of my tables in SQL Server 2025:

ALTER TABLE dbo.CustomerContact
ADD CONSTRAINT PK_CustomerContact
    PRIMARY KEY (CustomerID);

-- Create index on CustomerEmail
CREATE INDEX IX_CustomerContact_CustomerEmail
ON dbo.CustomerContact (CustomerEmail);
CREATE INDEX IX_CustomerContact_CustomerPhone
ON dbo.CustomerContact (phone);
I then do this to disable one index:
alter index IX_CustomerContact_CustomerPhone on dbo.CustomerContact disable
I see this when I check the index status:Index status for CustomerContactI decide to rebuild all indexes with this command:
ALTER INDEX ALL ON dbo.CustomerContact rebuild
After I do this, what will I see for the index status?

See possible answers