Does SQL 2008 offer “at the block level encryption”? And so, for example, as the data comes off the disk, a secure cipher such as Blowfish might be used to decrypt a block that it may read, like, 16K blocks. So it decrypts it, and everything the system sees, the system sees it as in the clear. Yet what’s stored on the disk is pseudorandom noise. So if someone were to get access to the data file, it’s of absolutely no use to them.
I’m not suggesting to call an encryption function to decrypt a record. As I think through it, I suppose in this scenario, you couldn’t search the database.
I’m having a difficult time finding any reference documentation toward the scenario I outline above; do you know of any?
Understanding Transparent Data Encryption
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb934049.aspx