SQL Server CLR Integration to achieve Encryption/Decryption

I have a requirement to store the data in encrypted form in database tables. I want to do it at the database level but here are the problems I am facing:

1. Data Type of the field should be Varbinary.
2. Encryption is not supported by Workgroup edition
3. Is it possible to encrypt Numeric Fields?

I want to access the encrypted data in tables to fetch in views and stored procedure for some processing but due to above problems I am not able to.

Here is my Environment:

Development Platform - ASP.Net,.Net Framework 3.5,Visual studio 2008

Server Operating System - Windows Server 2008

Database - SQL Server 2008 Work group edition

I was also thinking to adopt a different approach to resolve this issue (yet to test it's feasibility). I was just wondering if I could create a CLR function (which could take parameters to e开发者_运维知识库ncrypt and decrypt data using Cryptography types provided in .Net framework) and use the CLR integration feature of SQL Server and call that function from stored procedure and views.

I am not sure if I am thinking in right direction? Any advice on this as well please.

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Yes, you can do that. However, your SQL CLR assembly may need to be marked as unsafe for the crypto classes to work, depending on what cryptoapi methods you use.