Database columns can be encrypted multiple ways. Most of the databases have built-in support to encrypt the values. For example, in Postgres we can use the function pgp_sym_encrypt and pgp_sym_decrypt. It has some disadvantages like every read/write operation will have some operation overhead and slow down the DB servers. Most of the database providers give an option to encrypt the values. Moreover, keys used for the encryption should be properly managed. And it is complicated to do within the realms of the database servers. In a distributed system, the computing costs should be kept minimal and databases have a very...
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