Database Encryption - An Overview of Contemporary Challenges and Design Considerations

This article describes the major challenges and design considerations pertaining to database encryption. The article first presents an attack model and the main relevant challenges of data security, encryption overhead, key management, and integration footprint. Next, the article reviews related academic work on alternative encryption configurations pertaining to encryption locus; indexing encrypted data; and key management. Finally, the article concludes with a benchmark using the following design criteria: encryption configuration, encryption granularity and keys storage.