![]() The encryption password is not tied into FileMaker Pro’s Security setup. That way, if the wrong people get access to your data file, they won’t be able to read the data without significant effort.įor an individual, hoping to increase the security of an unshared database running on FileMaker Pro, the encrypt/decrypt ability does not seem to add much over what can already be done with external tools, such as an encrypted disk image on OS X. In these days of Heartbleed hacker attacks and NSA snooping, no server actually seems very secure, so moving to a new level of file encryption appears to be an important step. Wise old FileMaker developers always recommended that you physically secure your database on a server and not let anyone near it. High security applications can use the FileMaker Server product running on a computer that is protected from ordinary users. They can also use the file and folder access control mechanisms of the underlying OS to restrict access from local users. Customers who require better file-level security can use file and folder encryption features built into the operating system (e.g.,WinNT and WinXP Pro) or with third party tools. The compressed data in the cache file is further obscured to protect the data and metadata with a fast proprietary encryption algorithm. When one FileMaker product is accessing peer-to-peer or client-server data, the local cache file no longer contains the list of all passwords, because authentication is performed remotely. This will help prevent casual attackers from extracting data from copies of the application files using a text-editor. The database file is not encrypted, but the data is obscured via a proprietary Unicode compression algorithm. ![]() ![]() ![]() This quote from a FileMaker white paper on security from FileMaker 7 era explains what is going on: Fortunately, the new version, FileMaker Pro 13, offers the ability to strongly encrypt files. We like to think of a FileMaker file as a locked box, but I was never quite sure about how secure a FileMaker database is, because in the old days, it wasn’t very. I started out exploring FileMaker Pro 13’s new encryption feature because I wondered about securing a single FileMaker database on my system. ![]()
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