Patent ID: 7844829

Claim:
A method for securing a database system, the method comprising: under control of a system administrator provisioning storage from a storage device, for storing database information; generating an asymmetric key pair comprising an encryption key and a decryption key, said encryption key being made available only to a security officer, and said decryption key being made available only to a database administrator and the database system; under control of the security officer utilizing said encryption key so that said database information is stored on the storage device in an encrypted manner; under control of the database administrator utilizing said decryption key for decrypting the database information stored on the storage device, wherein access to said decryption key is controlled by the database system based on user privileges; receiving a request from a user for access to the database information; determining whether the user has been granted privileges allowing to access to the database information; if the user has been granted privileges allowing access to the database information, automatically decrypting the database information to provide the access; and otherwise denying the request if the user has not been granted privileges allowing access to the database information; wherein no single user has access to both the encryption and decryption keys, and wherein no single user has access to the decryption key and the storage provisioned for storing the database information.