Encrypting Sensitive Data in Rails 7 with Encrypted Attributes
At Zonmaster, we manage a substantial amount of sensitive data, including Personally Identifiable Information (PII), along with other types of data. As part of our agreement with Amazon, we are committed to storing this information securely. While we previously relied on various gems to achieve this, having encryption features built directly into Rails has greatly enhanced our ability to protect this vital information.
Security is a top priority in modern web development
Recently I posted an article about moving some data out of our MySQL database and into S3 files. In that article, I mentioned that these columns were encrypted. Because Zonmaster started out life in 2015 it uses a home-grown encryption solution.
But now Rails 7 has introduced a powerful feature to help developers protect sensitive data: encrypted attributes. This built-in functionality provides an additional layer of security that is both easy to implement and robust.
