Patent ID: 8639948

Claim:
A method implemented and residing in a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium for execution on a processor, comprising: maintaining, by the processor, a database table in a database management system designated as an encrypted table; caching, by the processor, data to be stored into the database table and other database tables; determining, by the processor, if the cached data is to be written to an encrypted table based on table attributes for the database table stored in a cylinder index for cylinders; encrypting, by the processor, the data to be written to encrypted database tables, encryption performed on specific blocks for the database table, the specific blocks are physically stored on a disk in sectors grouped together as the cylinders and each block includes one or more rows of the database table, encryption is done for the database table on a block level rather than a column level; and writing, by the processor, the encrypted data to storage locations of appropriate tables, the encrypted data stored and retrieved independent of an underlying operating system.