How to Protect Sensitive (HIPAA) SQL Server Standard Data and Log Files
- by Quesi
I am dealing with electronic personal health information (ePHI or PHI) and HIPAA regulations require that only authorized users can access ePHI. Column-level encryption may be of value for some of the data, but I need the ability to do like searches on some of the PHI fields such as name.
Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) is a feature of SQL Server 2008 for encrypting database and log files. As I understand it this prevents someone who gains access to the MDF, LDF, or backup files from being able to do anything with the files because they are encrypted. TDE is only on enterprise and developer versions of SQL Server and enterprise is cost-prohibitive for my particular scenario. How can I get similar protection on SQL Server Standard? Is there a way to encrypt the database and backup files (is there a third-party tool)? Or just as good, is there a way to prevent the files from being used if the disk were attached to another machine (linux or windows)?
Administrator access to the files from the same machine is fine, but I just want to prevent any issues if the disk were removed and hooked up to another machine. What are some of the solutions for this that are out there?
