RDB-based secure data storage

["Calum Power" <enune () fribble net>]

G'day webappsec,

I have been asked by my employer to design a system for storing sensative
private data collected from the company's clients. They tell me that this
data MUST be very secure, yet clients must be able to update the
information themselves via a Web-based interface.

My immediate reaction was to use something like GPG/PGP to encrypt the
data before storing it in a RDBMS like MySQL. However this then has the
additional problem of needing the user to edit the data.

My next thought would be to have each clients 'username' be a public GPG
key, and their 'password' be the passphrase to this private key. This of
course would not be overly secure, and the 'administrator' of this would
not be able to update the information without using the users' password.

So, I was just wondering if anyone had come across the same problem.
Perhaps there's a method of encryption that I'm overlooking.

Cheers,

Calum

--
Calum Power
Cultural Jammer
Security Enthusiast
Hopeless Cynic

enune () fribble net
http://www.fribble.net