IDS Forum

Re: Vormetric

Posted By: Carlton Doe
Date: Wednesday, 26 February 2014, at 8:04 p.m.

In Response To: Vormetric (ANDREW PISTOCCHI)

Vormetric is the underlying technology of the IBM Data Encryption Expert (DEE) product which we sell to DB2 and Informix customers. They (Vormetric) got their start encrypting flat files. When first released, DEE only supported Informix instances using flat files for chunks. They have since improved their software to support raw devices.

Basically, you encrypt an entire dbspace (or more). What ever tables (or table fragments) or indexes you want encrypted, you put in an encrypted dbspace(s). the encryption keys are held in a separate server which handles key rotation and provides you (the admin) with access controls. When an SQL call needs to access data in an encrypted dbspace, the key server is queried for access privileges for the user ID. It may also ask for the key if it isn't already cached on the Informix side. If approved, access is granted and unencrypted data is returned.

Is there an impact on throughput? Yes. Is it horrific? no. It's the price you pay for the security.

BTW, since the Informix backup API calls simply read disk pages (i'm generalizing here) , instance backups of encrypted dbspaces are encrypted.

Carlton

-------------------------------------------------
Carlton Doe
Flower Mound, TX

No trees were killed in the transmission of this email, however a large number of electrons were temporarily inconvenienced.

On Feb 26, 2014, at 4:55 PM, "ANDREW PISTOCCHI" <APISTOCCHI@UT.EDU> wrote:

> Tomorrow morning we have a demo / presentation from Vormetric, a company that
> deals with Data Encryption. They specialize in encrypting data at rest and say
> they Informix is supported. I was invited to this one last minute so I didn't
> have time to research their products. I just wanted to ask if anyone currently
> uses Vormetric with Informix? They claim to protect data in and around the
> database by encrypting and controlling access to database files at the
> operating system level.
>
> Our university uses Jenzabar CX which runs on Informix version 11. It runs on
> a HP Integrity Blade and the OS is HPUX 11i version 3. In addition to the HP
> UNIX server, we have an IIS web server that uses services and ODBC connections
> to the backend Informix database. We also use a Document Imaging product from
> Perceptive called NolijWeb. NolijWeb runs on a Windows server using
> Apache/Tomcat and uses JDBC drivers to connect to Informix. Finally we use
> Cognos 10 from IBM for report writing which also connects to the back end
> database for reporting. I will be very interested to hear on the Vormetric
> solution especially with all the different applications and users we have
> accessing the Informix DB.
>
> So my question to them tomorrow will be how does the Vormetric solution work?
> I'm on their website now and they claim their solution does not affect
> performance. In theory it sounds great!
>
> Any information you might have would be helpful.
>
> Andy Pistocchi
> Sr. DBA / Systems Administrator
> The University of Tampa
>
>
> *******************************************************************************
> Forum Note: Use "Reply" to post a response in the discussion forum.
>

Messages In This Thread

• Vormetric
  ANDREW PISTOCCHI -- Wednesday, 26 February 2014, at 7:55 p.m.
  • Re: Vormetric
    Carlton Doe -- Wednesday, 26 February 2014, at 8:04 p.m.
  • RE: Vormetric
    Mueller, Daniel D. -- Wednesday, 26 February 2014, at 8:27 p.m.
    • Re: Vormetric
      Mark Jamison -- Wednesday, 26 February 2014, at 9:31 p.m.

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