Re: [Proposal] Table-level Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) and Key Management Service (KMS)

On Fri, Aug 23, 2019 at 07:45:22AM -0400, Stephen Frost wrote:
> Greetings,
>
> * Bruce Momjian (bruce(at)momjian(dot)us) wrote:
> > On Sat, Aug 17, 2019 at 01:52:17PM -0400, Stephen Frost wrote:
> > > Being PostgreSQL, I would expect us to shoot for as much flexibility as
> > > we possible, similar to what we've done for our ACL system where we
> > > support down to a column-level (and row level with RLS).
> > >
> > > That's our target end-goal. Having an incremental plan to get there
> > > where we start with something simpler and then work towards a more
> > > complicated implementation is fine- but that base, as I've said multiple
> > > times and as supported by what we see other database systems have,
> > > should include some kind of key store with support for multiple keys and
> > > a way to encrypt something less than the entire system. Every other
> > > database system that we consider at all comparable has at least that.
> >
> > Well, we don't blindly copy features from other databases. The features
> > has to be useful for our users and reasonable to implement in Postgres.
> > This is been the criteria for every other Postgres features I have seen
> > developed.
>
> Having listed out the feature set of each of the other major databases
> when it comes to TDE is exactly how we objectively look at what is being
> done in the industry, and that then gives us an understanding of what
> users (and auditors) coming from other platforms will expect.
>
> I entirely agree that we shouldn't just copy N feature from X other
> database system unless we feel that's the best approach, but when every
> other database system out there has capability Y for the general feature
> X that we're thinking about implementing, we should be questioning an
> approach which doesn't include that.

Agreed. The features of other databases are a clear source for what we
should consider and run through the useful/reasonable filter.

--
Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> http://momjian.us
EnterpriseDB http://enterprisedb.com

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