How Deterministic Encryption Supports Filtering

To be able to use filters when data is encrypted, we have to allow some patterns in our data. Deterministic encryption uses a static initialization vector (IV) so that encrypted data can be matched to a particular field value. The system can’t read a piece of data that’s encrypted, but it does know how to retrieve the ciphertext that stands for that piece of data thanks to the static IV. The IV is unique for a given field in a given org and can only be decrypted with your org-specific encryption key.

We evaluate the relative strengths and weaknesses of cryptographic approaches based on the types of attacks that can be launched against a particular algorithm. We also consider the length of time that it could take for the attack to succeed. For example, it is commonly said that a brute-force attack against an AES 256-bit key would take a billion billion years given current computing capabilities. Nevertheless, it is common practice to rotate keys regularly.

Certain kinds of attacks become a bit less far-fetched when you get away from purely random ciphertext. For example, an attacker could conceivably analyze deterministically encrypted ciphertext and determine that the cleartext string Alice always resolves to the ciphertext YjNkY2JlNjU5M2JkNjk4MGJiNWE2NGQ5NzI5MzU1OTcNCg==. Given enough time to eavesdrop, an attacker could defeat encryption by building a dictionary of cleartext values to ciphertext values.

The Salesforce Shield approach is to expose just enough determinism to let bona fide users filter on encrypted data while limiting it enough to ensure that a given plaintext value doesn’t universally result in the same ciphertext value across all fields, objects, or orgs. Even if an attacker successfully matched cleartext to encrypted values for one field, the attacker would have to do it all over again for another field, and again for the same field in another object.

In this way, deterministic encryption decreases encryption strength only as minimally necessary to allow filtering.

Deterministic encryption comes in two types: case-sensitive and case-insensitive. With case-sensitive encryption, a SOQL query against the Contact object, where LastName = Jones, returns only Jones, not jones or JONES. Similarly, when the case-sensitive deterministic scheme tests for unicity (uniqueness), each version of “Jones” is unique.

For case-insensitive, a SOQL query against the Lead object, where Company = Acme, returns Acme, acme, or ACME. When the case-insensitive scheme tests for unicity (uniqueness), each version of Acme is considered identical.