Encrypting and Decrypting Specific Fields of Messages

You can encrypt and decrypt fields of a message to protect sensitive data (known as personally identifiable information (PII)) flowing in web services and JCA adapters in Oracle SOA Suite and Oracle Service Bus. This feature provides for the obfuscation of certain fields (for example, SSNs) to prevent this data from appearing in administration consoles in clear text.

Figure 47-11 shows an incoming message being encrypted when entering the SOA composite application in a service binding component and an outgoing message being decrypted when exiting the SOA composite application in a reference binding component. Messages outside the composite can be protected with other message protection policies (WS-Security/SSL).

Figure 47-11 Message Encryption and Decryption in a SOA Composite Application

Description of "Figure 47-11 Message Encryption and Decryption in a SOA Composite Application"

The following code shows an example of an unencrypted message. The PII fields are name and driversLicense.

<person>
  <name>John</name>
  <driversLicense>B1234</driversLicense>
  <ssn>123-456-789</ssn>
</person>

The following code shows an example of the encrypted message with the name and driversLicense fields in encrypted format.

<person>
  <name>John</name>
 <driversLicense>encrypted:fdslj[lmsfwer09fsn;keyname=pii-csf-key</driversLicense>
  <ssn>encrypted:gdf45md%mfsd103k;keyname=pii-csf-key</ssn>
</person>

The encryption format is as follows:

encrypted:<CIPHER_TEXT>;keyname:<CSF_KEY_NAME>

Note:

If both a PII policy and authorization policy are attached to a SOA composite application, the authorization policy is executed before the PII policy. This is because the PII policy may encrypt the field used for authorization.

If the authorization policy is attached to a component and it requires an already-encrypted field, authorization fails.