I’ve been trying to encrypt fields in Domino Designer, but it’s not working properly. I’ve used every single instructions I could find, from the help menu and from the internet, but it’s still not working.
I’ve read that if a field is encrypted with a secret key, a normal user with no key cannot access, see or edit the fields at all. But even after encrypting the fields, and testing it by sending the database template to a fellow colleague for testing ( I didn’t send him the key so that I can tell whether he can view the encrypted fields or not), it seems that he can still see the encrypted fields, and is able to edit it as well. He was only blocked from saving the documents because he was prompted with a messagebox that says he does not have the required key.
So how do I get the required fields to be at least uneditable or hidden from people with no authority successfully? I need to use a secret key to encrypt these fields as it is required by my manager.
Here’s the steps that I followed to encrypt the documents for your reference.
Access the Advanced Tab of the required Field Properties, and enabled encryption for this field.
Create a key by going to File > User Security > Notes Data > Document
Open back the form with the encrypted fields, click on the Security Tab of the Field Properties and choose the created key from the Default Encryption Keys drop-down menu
Save the document
Is there any part of the steps that I did wrong? Please do point it out. Thanks for your attention
Did you try testing with data in the field(s)? When the fields are empty, users can try to edit the data but will be unable to save what they enter. You may want to use hide-when formulas or computed subforms to keep the fields ot of the UI altogether.
I tried testing it and it seems like, only when the form is merged with the key causes the document to unable to be saved/ edit.
The major problem about the form encryption is that, instead of disabling the save option when an encrypted field is edited, any fields, even the ones that are unencrypted, cannot be saved when edited. I only need to have the encrypted fields to be unable to edit, not the whole form. If an unauthorized user views the form, he can edit the unencrypted fields and save it, but is blocked from doing so with encrypted fields. How do I do that?
Is the hide-when formulas, the one in the field properties bar, where we set it to certain conditions using formulas to hide it? If so, what kind of command should I use so that it can check if a user has a secret key, then the fields will be displayed, and it not, hidden?
Hi, Just right click on the document that u have created with the Encrypted data and select the Security tab and Select the encryption key as well.I think u no need to select that encryption key in the form.Iam not sure.But try the first step for the document as well and see.If u get tell me otherwise i will try some alternate and let u know.
I’ve tried using the document encryption, but the thing about document encryption is that it encrypts all the fields in the documents. And eventhough the documents are uneditable, we can still view the secured information. I need to have the informations in certain fields to be both non-editable and hidden. Another major problem with document encryption is that it only encrypts documents that are newly created after you have set the encryption properties. For old documents, a non-authorized user can still view and edit the encrypted fields.
I’d love to know any other alternatives to this. I just need to get certain fields to be encrypted using secret keys. So far I only know that on field encryption allows that, but even after following the steps written in the Help Menu and from random Domino sites, it still wouldn’t work. I’m not so sure which part I may have done wrong.
Field encryption, document encryption, and (Notes) mail encryption are all the same thing. In all cases, only the encryptable fields are encrypted, and just adding the encryptable bit on field in a database won’t go back and retroactively encrypt existing documents.
For a good summary of how document/field encryption works, check out some of the the security redbooks, redpapers, or whitepapes. A convenient way to find them all is through the Lotus Security homepage at
Subject: RE: field encryption is document encryption
Write an agent that sets the SecretEncryptionKeys field to the name of the secret key, and run the agent using an ID file that contains that named key.
