Re: PGP encrypt/decrypt - Prereqistes

Dear Mr. Craig Ringer,
Thank you for your response. 
I would like to crypt certain sensitive information in my applications such as Student register number, their marks, results etc. For this reason i done a study for doing encryption. Where I found that this PGP will help the encryption/decryption.  
Any other methods/techniques are there for encryption? I prefer encryption with "key"; key also should not be known to Developers. 
Please suggest any such methods. 
Thank you in advance.

Vikram

________________________________
From: Craig Ringer <craig(at)postnewspapers(dot)com(dot)au>
To: Vikram A <vikkiatbipl(at)yahoo(dot)in>
Cc: PGSQL - Genearal <pgsql-general(at)postgresql(dot)org>
Sent: Friday, 10 June 2011 6:20 PM
Subject: Re: [GENERAL] PGP encrypt/decrypt - Prereqistes

On 06/10/2011 05:22 PM, Vikram A wrote:

> I am new to postgreSQL. I would like to use encrypt/decrypt using PGP
> keys on windows.

It'd be helpful to know in more detail what you want to encrypt and decrypt, and how. Getting crypto right is about a lot more than using good algorithms and good implementations.

> 2. Any manual to follow the steps ?

You'll want the pgycrypto contrib module. Its documentation is here:

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/pgcrypto.html#AEN124147

... and I think (but am not certain) that it's available on Windows. Note that according to the documentation pgcrypto does not support signing - or presumably for verifying signatures.

You will also want GnuPG from http://www.gnupg.org/  to use it for key management and key generation.

--
Craig Ringer