Secured Vault in SQL Server: to store Salt value

Aravindhan Ravichandran 20

Scope : data anonymization on the fly i.e. create views on top of the physical table and keep the anonymized views in a separate schema.

One of the key technique is to tokenize the key identifiers for cross schema correlation.

Idea is to tokenize the key identifiers by using hashbytes( 'salt value' +key identifier) as this techniques often named as 'Salt hashing' .

Looking to store the salt value in a secured manner , use it in a UDF to get the anonymized token value in the view.

Is there any key vault in SQL Server data base, where this kind of key / Salt value can be stored and accessed by owner or super user(s) when needed.

Navya 6,615 Reputation points Microsoft Vendor

2024-07-19T12:18:26.55+00:00

Hi @Aravindhan Ravichandran

Thank you for posting this in Microsoft Q&A.

I understand that you want to store the salt value from salt hashing method.

A salt is a value generated by a cryptographically secure function that is added to the input of hash functions to create unique hashes for every input, regardless of the input not being unique. Salt value either appending or prepending to password. The salt should be unique and randomly generated for each password.

The normal method is to store the salt along with the hash value. Preferably, you let the password hashing library generate the salt and handle the encoding of the salt and hash value as a single string. Among possible password hashing functions, bcrypt is about the best you can have right now, and that's what password_hash() will use.

Is there any key vault in SQL Server data base, where this kind of key / Salt value can be stored and accessed by owner or super user(s) when needed.

Extensible Key Management (EKM) that enables the encryption keys that protect the database files to be stored in an off-box device such as a smartcard, USB device, or EKM/HSM module. You can use EKM to store and manage the salt value securely, but it is not advisable to distribute it freely to anyone who requests it.

For your reference: Extensible Key Management Using Azure Key Vault (SQL Server)

Hope this helps. Do let us know if you any further queries.

Thanks,

Navya.
Navya 6,615 Reputation points Microsoft Vendor

2024-07-22T04:14:55.26+00:00

Hi @Aravindhan Ravichandran

Just checking in to see if above information was helpful. If you have any further updates on this issue, please feel free to post back.

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Secured Vault in SQL Server: to store Salt value