Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Encryption
Automatically Secure Your Data in Transport with SSL
A leading industry-standard security protocol, Secure Socket Layer (SSL) encryption secures the integrity of your data by encrypting information and providing client/server authentication.
With DataDirect, you can choose to have your applications automatically encrypt any data exchanged between a database server, an application, and their supporting databases with SSL. Doing so will provide the following benefits:
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Development |
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Ease of Development |
Reliance on non-standard encryption mechanisms complicates development and impedes later changes. |
As an industry standard, SSL encryption relies on established development libraries available on all commonly used IT architectures. It simplifies your implementation processes, minimizes development complexity, and reduces the long-term risks of non-adaptability. |
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Network Security |
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Risk |
Feature Benefit |
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Router Vulnerabilities |
Data packets travel between drivers and databases via one or more routers, which may be configured to "read" data packets passing through them, allowing a user to log and exploit the information. |
Enabling SSL encryption ensures that any data exchanged between a driver and database is encrypted. This in turn ensures that — even if intercepted — captured data will be unreadable and impossible to modify in any intelligible manner. |
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Packet Sniffing |
Sophisticated freeware can be used to log data packets passing over a network, putting transmitted data at risk of being captured and logged. |
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SQL Injection |
Where data packets have been captured by a hacker, SQL statements they contain can be modified to return more information than intended from a data source — for instance, to return from an HR database information about all employees instead of just one. |
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Database Access Security |
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Challenge |
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Feature Benefit |
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Credential Vulnerability |
Packet sniffing commonly targets database access credentials — i.e., usernames and passwords used to access a database. Credentials transmitted in clear text or via weak encryption leave themselves vulnerable to being captured and used maliciously. |
Using SSL encryption ensures that any database credentials sent by a driver to a database will be encrypted and thus useless to unauthorized users. Better yet, Kerberos can be used to entirely eliminate the transmission of credentials. |
