Recently, Microsoft quietly let us know that TDE (Transparent Data Encryption) will be available in the Standard Edition of SQL Server 2019. If you don’t follow SQL topics on Twitter then it would have been easy to have missed that.

Transparent Data Encryption is the ability to have all your data stored encrypted on disk – otherwise known as encryption at rest. This is data files, log files and backups. TDE allows this without you having to change anything in your applications or code (thus the transparent part).

This is big news. Given the upsurge in awareness of data protection – largely driven by GDPR and other data regulation – encryption is a hot topic.

Management in most organisations tend to be keen to have encryption at rest – especially if it doesn’t cost much, and is easy to implement. It doesn’t always achieve as much as people might think – but it’s still very much a desirable feature.

For us as SQL Server DBAs I can see this change meaning a couple of things. The first is that there’s likely to be a push to upgrade to SQL Server 2019 much sooner than we might have seen with previous versions. It’s often having a “killer feature” that pushes upgrades. For SQL 2019 – if you run on Standard Edition – I believe this is that killer feature.

The other thing it means is that if you haven’t worked with TDE before, you’re going to want to get knowledgeable about it. It’s very easy to set up, but you’re going to want to understand the potential pitfalls, issues around managing it, how it’s going to affect performance. What exactly it’s protecting you from, and additional steps (that may not be obvious) you should take to make it more secure.

If you understand these things before you have to think about implementing TDE then you’ll be able to plan a smooth implementation – and be able to advise management from a strong knowledge base.

I tried to cover all these topics on this blog previously, so here’s some links. I also have some new stuff coming up about TDE.

What is TDE?
Setting up TDE
Encrypting an Existing Database with TDE
Understanding Keys and Certificates with TDE
How Secure is TDE – And how to Prevent Hacking
Thoughts on Query Performance with TDE Enabled
Migrating or Recovering a TDE Protected Database
Recovering a TDE Protected Database Without the Certificate
TDE – Regenerating the Database Encryption Key
Rotating TDE Certificates Without Having to Re-Encrypt the Data

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