This post originated from an RSS feed registered with .NET Buzz by Sascha Corti. Original Post: Encrypting Data within SQL Server 2005 Feed Title: Console.WriteLine("Hello World"); Feed URL: http://www.corti.com/WebLogSascha/blogxbrowsing.asmx/GetRss? Feed Description: A technology blog with a focus on the .NET framework, the Visual Studio .NET tools and the Windows server platform with of course the normal weblog-noise on what's happening in the industry and reviews of the latest geeky gadgets. Latest .NET Buzz Posts Latest .NET Buzz Posts by Sascha Corti Latest Posts From Console.WriteLine("Hello World");

Two good places to start looking for information on "SQL Server 2005"s built-in field-level encryption technology:

TechNet Webcast: SQL Server 2005 Series (Part 5 of 10): Protecting Sensitive Data (Level 200) at
http://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/eventdetail.aspx?eventID=1032270060&Culture=en-US
Building upon the discussion of authentication and authorization in a previous webcast, this one is covers the crypto support in SQL Server 2005. . . . We begin with an introduction to the concepts of database encryption including encryption support, keys, certificates and key management. We show how SQL 2005 can protect sensitive data using data encryption and module signatures, and introduce sign modules, what these are and how they work . . .
Source: http://myitforum.techtarget.com/articles/18/view.asp?id=8497

SQL Server 2005 Security - Part 3 Encryption
By Marcin Policht
After discussing authentication and authorization behavior of SQL Server 2005 Beta 2 in the previous two articles of this series, it is time to look into other security-related changes. In particular, we will focus on the freshly introduced native database encryption capabilities. While some encryption functionality existed in the previous versions (e.g. involving column encryption APIs within User Defined Functions or PWDENCRYPT password one-way hash function), it was relatively limited and rarely used. SQL Server 2005 provides significant improvements in this area.
Source: http://www.databasejournal.com/features/mssql/article.php/3483931

Another good source is the "books-online" installed with SQL Server 2005 Beta 2, but you need to install the bits to have a look at these...