Crypto-assistant: Towards facilitating developer´s encryption of sensitive data

Author

Rodriguez Garcia, Ricardo ; Thorpe, Julie ; Vargas Martin, Miguel

Author_Institution

Fac. of Bus. & Inf. Technol., Univ. of Ontario Inst. of Technol., Oshawa, ON, Canada

fYear

2014

fDate

23-24 July 2014

Firstpage

342

Lastpage

346

Abstract

The lack of encryption of data at rest or in motion is one of the top 10 database vulnerabilities [1]. We suggest that this vulnerability could be prevented by encouraging developers to perform encryption-related tasks by enhancing their integrated development environment (IDE). To this end, we created the Crypto-Assistant: a modified version of the Hibernate Tools plug-in for the popular Eclipse IDE. The purpose of the Crypto-Assistant is to mitigate the impact of developers´ lack of security knowledge related to encryption by facilitating the use of encryption directives via a graphical user interface that seamlessly integrates with Hibernate Tools. Two preliminary tests helped us to identify items for improvement which have been implemented in Crypto-Assistant. We discuss Crypto-Assistant´s architecture, interface, changes in the developers´ workflow, and design considerations.

Keywords

cryptography; graphical user interfaces; object-oriented methods; Crypto-Assistant; Eclipse IDE; Hibernate Tools plug-in; IDE; database vulnerabilities; encryption directives; encryption-related tasks; graphical user interface; integrated development environment; sensitive data encryption; Databases; Encryption; Java; Prototypes; Software;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Privacy, Security and Trust (PST), 2014 Twelfth Annual International Conference on

Conference_Location

Toronto, ON

Print_ISBN

978-1-4799-3502-4

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/PST.2014.6890958

Filename

6890958