Envelope encryption

Envelope encryption is a technique to secure your data encryption key. Data encryption keys are symmetric keys to increase the performance of data encryption. Symmetric encryption keys work with an encryption algorithm such as AES and produce ciphertext that you can store safely, as it is not readable by a human. However, you need to save the symmetric encryption data key along with data to use it for data decryption, as needed. Now, you need to further protect the data key in isolation, which is where envelope encryption helps you to protect it. Let's understand it in more detail with the help of the following diagram:

Envelope encryption

The preceding diagram illustrates the following flow to explain envelope encryption:

1. The symmetric key is generated from software or hardware.
2. The generated symmetric data key is used to encrypt plaintext data.
3. The key encrypts data using an algorithm such as AES and generates encrypted ciphertext data.
4. The encrypted data...