Securing sensitive parts of App.config/web.config

As a developer, you will undoubtedly work with sensitive information such as passwords. How you handle this information during development is very important. In the past, I have received copies of a client's live database to use for testing. This does pose a very real security risk for your client.

Often, we keep settings in a web.config file (when working with web applications). For this example, though, I will be demonstrating a console application that uses an App.config file. The same logic can be applied to a web.config file too.

Getting ready

Creating a console application is the quickest way to demonstrate this recipe. If, however, you want to follow along using a web application (and securing a web.config file), you can do so.

How to do it…

1. In the console application, locate the App.config file. This is the file that contains the sensitive data:

   

2. If you open the App.config file, you will see that within the appSettings tag there is a key...