Encryption in MDF file possible?

I am working on a distributed application that will use a SQL Express 2005 MDF file for the primary application data storage. The program will be storing sensitive data and I would like to encrypt the data in it.

I have searched through the forums and cannot find any reference to how to enable encryption for an MDF file.

I thought about writing my own encrypt / decrypt functions, however, I'm using databound controls and do not have a home-grown data access layer that I can tap into to implement the encryption.

When I originally added the MDF file to my application, under the "Advanced" settings, I saw that I could switch an "Encryption" property to "True"... figuring that would do the trick. However, when the MDF file is created I get an error stating, "The instance of SQL Server you attempted to connect to does not support encryption".

What is the trick for encrypting data in an MDF file that is being used with databound controls? Remember that this will be a distributed app - so if there are any customizations that are required on the SQL Express side to support this - I will need to find some way to configure SQL Express on the target machines during my bootstrap install of it.

Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

I think you actually want to encrypt the data and not the file. Here is a link to a starting point:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms190357.aspx

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Yes - that is what I meant... encrypting *data* in the MDF file.

As I wrote in my original post, I'm using data-bound controls, so I do not have a data layer that have created to pass data through - it is all being handled by the magic of Microsoft. That being said, I'm not sure how to implement the information contained in the link you provided. That seemed in line with me writing my own encryption functions and passing the data through them during read / writing to the database - which isn't an option for me using databound controls. Or is it?

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I've never tried using the the SQL Server 2005 encryption with databound controls but it should work as long as you can edit the query. You basically extend the query to include encryption and decryption information.

The pointer I sent you is just one of several BTW