Can SSRS reports decrypt column-level encrypted columns natively?

Question

Sorry if this is obvious, but my searching on "SSRS encryption column" kept resulting in articles describing the encryption of the actual SSRS report, and did not address my question regarding an SSRS report accessing a column within a table where the column has been encrypted.

Question: does SSRS handle this very gracefully?  Do I just include the decryption key somewhere within the report, and then it invokes the decryption algorithm implicitly (wish, hope, wish hope).

Or, should I assume use of a SQL Stored Proc that handles the decryption so that the SSRS report receives a column in its decrypted form?

What is the best practice way of handling this.  Any info or links will be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

Hi,

      You can decrypt the encrypted column inside the stored procedure and send the decrypted column value to SSRS.It would be my approach,iam not sure about handling decryption through SSRS. 

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Thanks & Regards, sathya

Answer 2

Hi Larryahis,

As far as I know, there are no encrypt and decrypt function within SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) to encrypt a value field in SSRS report. May be you can make use of this at the database level itself if you are working with SQL Server source, you can refer to the link below to see the functions for encrypt and decrypt in SQL Server.
http://www.sql-server-helper.com/functions/string-encryption.aspx

Hope this helps.

Regards,
Charlie Liao

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Charlie Liao
TechNet Community Support