CODEWITHSUNDEEP
djangogoogle-app-engineencryptiongoogle-cloud-sqlpgcrypto
strangetimes
strangetimes

Reputation: 5213

Should I be encrypting data in a CloudSQL database?

Google CloudSQL documentation states that the data is encrypted in transit and at rest.

I'm using pgcrypto in a Django app to encrypt sensitive information. However I'm wondering if there's any point in doing this since it's already encrypted at rest. The only thing I can imagine is an event where the Google App Engine server with the deployed code gets compromised and the password to the database is somehow leaked - the hackers would eventually have access to unencrypted data as they 'read' it in. But then even with pgcrypto, in the event the GAE server is compromised, they'd still be able to run code to fetch unencrypted data.

Am I overthinking this? The goal is to provide total piece of mind to the end-user with as many 'hurdles' introduced as possible to ensure their data stays completely secure. I have a feeling I don't really need pgcrypto, but looking for an educated reply.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1745

Answers (1)

strangetimes
strangetimes

Reputation: 5213

The rather educated answer is: Yes.

Underlying encryption offered by CloudSQL is like FileVault offered by OS X - your stuff truly is encrypted, but if you're logged in, everything is world-readable to you.

The main worry is that you, or someone who is able to compromise your server, is able to read data in plain-text. Data needs to to be encrypted, and I've personally gone beyond the default AES 128-bit offered by most databases and switched to AES 256-bit with initialisation vector (a different one for each encrypted content). This will ensure that the data is encrypted, inaccessible and unreadable by even yourself. Yes, your code is eventually able to decrypt but storing and protecting the decryption keys is a different topic altogether.

Upvotes: 2

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