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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.

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.
    - 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

Network data encryption

Use network encryption to encrypt data transmitted between server and client, and between server and other server.

Encryption is the process of transforming data into an unintelligible form to prevent the unauthorized use of the data. To read an encrypted file, you must have access to a secret decryption key or password. Unencrypted data is called plain text; encrypted data is called cipher text. A cipher is an encryption-decryption algorithm.

Note: Support for Communication Support Module (CSM) is removed starting Informix Server 14.10.xC9 . You should use Transport Layer Security (TLS)/Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) instead.