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Security
You can secure your Informix® database server and the data that is stored in your Informix databases. You can encrypt data, secure connections, control user privileges and access, and audit data security.
Security in HCL Informix®
The Informix® Security Guide documents methods for keeping your data secure by preventing unauthorized viewing and altering of data or database objects, including how to use the secure-auditing facility of the database server.
Securing data
Network data encryption
Use network encryption to encrypt data transmitted between server and client, and between server and other server.
Background Knowledge on Keystores
This topic offers some generic insights into keystores and how they are used for secure communications with the TLS (Transport Layer Security) protocol. While the first part provides the theoretical background, the second part shows examples for applying this in practice using OpenSSL.
Concepts of Keys, Certificates and Keystores for TLS
This section explains keystores for TLS/SSL (Transport Layer Security / Secure Socket Layer) connections between database clients and servers.
Keystores

Security
You can secure your Informix® database server and the data that is stored in your Informix databases. You can encrypt data, secure connections, control user privileges and access, and audit data security.
- Security in HCL Informix®
  The Informix® Security Guide documents methods for keeping your data secure by preventing unauthorized viewing and altering of data or database objects, including how to use the secure-auditing facility of the database server.
  - Securing data
    - HCL Informix® directory security
      utilities and product directories are secure by default.
    - Network data encryption
      Use network encryption to encrypt data transmitted between server and client, and between server and other server.
      - Communication support modules for data transmission encryption
        You can use the communication support modules (CSMs) to encrypt data transmissions, including distributed queries, over the network.
      - Enterprise replication and high availability network data encryption
        You can configure network data encryption for Enterprise Replication and high availability clusters by using configuration parameters.
      - Background Knowledge on Keystores
        This topic offers some generic insights into keystores and how they are used for secure communications with the TLS (Transport Layer Security) protocol. While the first part provides the theoretical background, the second part shows examples for applying this in practice using OpenSSL.
        Concepts of Keys, Certificates and Keystores for TLS
        This section explains keystores for TLS/SSL (Transport Layer Security / Secure Socket Layer) connections between database clients and servers.
        A high level view of TLS/SSL
        TLS handshake, certificates and public-private key pairs
        Relationship between certificates and keys
        Keystores
        Keystore content
        Certificate authorities
        Examples for creating keystores using OpenSSL
        Examples for creating keystores using IBM® GSKit
    - Column-level encryption
      You can use column-level encryption to store sensitive data in an encrypted format. After encrypting sensitive data, such as credit card numbers, only users who can provide a secret password can decrypt the data.
    - Connection security
      You can administer the security of the connections to the database server by using authentication and authorization processes.
    - Discretionary access control
      Discretionary access control verifies whether the user who is attempting to perform an operation has been granted the required privileges to perform that operation.
    - Label-Based Access Control
      You can use label-based access control (LBAC), an implementation of multi-level security (MLS), to control who has read access and who has write access to individual rows and columns of data.
  - Auditing data security

Keystores

The server as well as the client have reasons to keep their key and certificates needed for TLS communications in a safe place. The server mainly wants to make sure that its private key remains private. Whereas the client is concerned with the certificates being authentic, i.e. that they have not been manipulated. For both purposes a keystore is used to keep encryption keys and certificates in a safe and organized place. As an abstract concept, a keystore can be implemented in different ways: as a collection of files in a directory structure with restrictive access permissions, in some proprietary format of a "database file" or in a file with a standardized format. Keeping so called "PEM" files in a directory is an example for the first kind of keystores and can be used with OpenSSL. The proprietary "CMS" format of "*.kdb" files implemented by IBM's GSKit is an example for the second kind. This section concentrates on the public PKCS #12 standard for keystore files, an example for the third implementation kind.

PKCS #12 defines a file format for storing different cryptography objects in a single file. It is part of the Public-Key Cryptography Standards (PKCS) family of standards published by RSA Laboratories. PKCS #12 is the successor to Microsoft's "PFX" and therefore offers some compatibility between these two formats.

In addition to (local) file keystores, there are also several remote keystore services. Proprietary examples of these are Amazon Web Services Key Management Service (AWS KMS) and Microsoft Azure Key Vault. Key Management Interoperability Protocol (KMIP) services are available from several vendors or providers and adhere to the public KMIP standard.