Data Encryption
Data security comprises the following elements:
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Privacy—keeping data hidden from unauthorized parties.
Privacy is normally implemented with some type of encryption. Encryption is the scrambling of information such that no one can read it unless they have a piece of data known as a key.
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Integrity—keeping transmitted data intact.
Integrity can be accomplished with simple checksums or, better, with more complex cryptographic checksums known as one-way hashes, and often with digital signatures as well.
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Authentication—verifying the identity of an entity that's transferring data.
Authentication can be accomplished using passwords, or with digital signatures, which are by far the most popular and most reliable method of authentication.
PeopleSoft Encryption Technology (PET) provides a way for you to use hashes and digital signatures to secure critical PeopleSoft data and communicate securely with other businesses. It enables you to extend and improve cryptographic support for your data in PeopleTools, giving you strong cryptography with the flexibility to change and grow, by incrementally acquiring stronger and more diverse algorithms for encrypting data. PeopleSoft delivers PET with support for the OpenSSL encryption library.
To implement PET:
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Load the algorithms of an encryption library into the PET database.
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Generate accompanying encryption keys, and insert them into the PET keystore.
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Define a sequence, or chain, of algorithms by selecting from all the algorithms in the database.
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Define an encryption profile, which is an instance of an algorithm chain applicable to a specific encryption task.
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Write PeopleCode to invoke the encryption profile.
Note:
Along with the delivered OpenSSL encryption library, a PeopleSoft database may also contain encryption keys for internal use of the PeopleCode Crypt class. These encryption keys do not need to be modified.