You'll have to encrypt each column independently. If you use the same key and initialization vector, you should be able to search, but of course, only for exact matches. Also, the size of each field will probably grow to the next multiple of your cipher's block size, so you'll need to pad the data before you encrypt; and you'll have to remove nulls from the encrypted data. I think the sequence would have to be
If you use an encryption method that makes this true, it is less secure. Random salt is generally required to maintain security, but it is the usual risk versus ease of use balance.
the other response, using a SHA (or similar) hash for the search index and a secure encryption scheme on the actual data, is much better and works well in practice. That still restricts you to exact match (no using "LIKE" and similar).
HTH.
michael
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