Database encryption as an Aspect

Encryption is an important method for implementing confidentiality in information systems. Unfortunately applying encryption effectively can be quite complicated. Encryption, as well as other security concerns, is also often spread out in an application making implementation difficult. This crosscutting nature of encryption makes it a potentially ideal candidate for implementation using AOP. In this article we provide an example of how database encryption was applied using AOP with AspectJ on a real-life healthcare database application. Although the attempt was promising with regards to modularity, amount of effort and security engineering, it also revealed problems related to substring queries that need to be solved to make the approach really useful.