A common question on the newsgroups is "how do you encrypt data in a .NET [or other] client application and then decrypt it on SQL Server [or vice versa]?" I actually ran down my list of answers to someone who asked this in the newsgroups a few weeks ago. I won’t get into the details, but the answers all pretty much say the same thing -- theoretically you could make it work (with a lot of assumptions on your part), but it won’t be easy -- and probably not worth the investment of time and energy, to be honest. Now it’s time to change my answer.
You see, when this question is brought up the people who ask usually make a specific point to ask about symmetric encryption (AES, Triple DES, etc.). You can’t easily make the “encrypt on client/decrypt on server” scenario work with symmetric encryption because SQL Server doesn’t let you import or export symmetric keys.
Read more: Michael Coles: Sergeant SQL
You see, when this question is brought up the people who ask usually make a specific point to ask about symmetric encryption (AES, Triple DES, etc.). You can’t easily make the “encrypt on client/decrypt on server” scenario work with symmetric encryption because SQL Server doesn’t let you import or export symmetric keys.
Read more: Michael Coles: Sergeant SQL