topic Re: Decryption of PGP encrypted dataset in SAS Procedures

Decryption of PGP encrypted dataset

NAwasthi — Thu, 31 Mar 2016 15:17:24 GMT

Hi All,

Not sure if I am putting this in right group, please route me to right group if it is not the correct one.

We want to set up a mechanism to load PGP encrypted data set in SAS Office Analytics servers. Does SAS provides a capability to decrypt the files.

Regards,

Nishant

Re: Decryption of PGP encrypted dataset

SASKiwi — Thu, 31 Mar 2016 19:35:17 GMT

Are you aware that SAS has its own encryption capabilities for datasets? It would be a lot easier than trying to use third-party encryption and you can even go as far as restricting access to SAS data libraries:

http://support.sas.com/documentation/cdl/en/seclibag/66930/HTML/default/viewer.htm#bookinfo.htm

Regarding PGP - I don't think SAS can decrypt these directly. However I understand you can configure WINZIP to use PGP so you could use WINZIP tools to indirectly decrypt. If you are working on Unix then no doubt there would be third-party tools to help you here as well.

Re: Decryption of PGP encrypted dataset

Kurt_Bremser — Fri, 01 Apr 2016 06:19:00 GMT

Downloads of PGP commandline tool for UNIX can be found here: http://www.pgpi.org/products/pgp/versions/freeware/unix/6.5.8/

Re: Decryption of PGP encrypted dataset

NAwasthi — Fri, 01 Apr 2016 06:37:00 GMT

Thanks, I will go through this and will post my findings.

Re: Decryption of PGP encrypted dataset

NAwasthi — Fri, 01 Apr 2016 07:14:40 GMT

Please correct me if I am wrong, the current blog says how to encrypt the
SAS dataset but I am looking for a functionality where SAS procs can be
use to import pgp/aes encrypted external file (delimited file either CSV or
text file) in SAS.

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Re: Decryption of PGP encrypted external dataset

NAwasthi — Fri, 01 Apr 2016 07:15:02 GMT

Re: Decryption of PGP encrypted external dataset

Kurt_Bremser — Fri, 01 Apr 2016 08:54:22 GMT

From my experience with such tools I guess that a pgp commandline tool can be used as a filter (eg pgp -parameters < encrypted_csv_file will send the decrypted file to standard output).

In such a case, it is best (IMHO) to define a filename pipe where the decryption process is coded into the physical filename (see above). When you use such a filename in an infile statement, the decryption is done on the fly and the decrypted data is handed over to SAS as if you directly read a plain, unencrypted file.

You need to have XCMD enabled for this to work.

Re: Decryption of PGP encrypted external dataset

NAwasthi — Fri, 01 Apr 2016 15:38:05 GMT

Hi Kurt,

Thanks for the response.

Does this means that encrypted file can be placed on SAS server(Unix box), PGP command line Tool will decrypt the file and the file can be used by SAS,. Is my iunderstanding is correct?

If that is correct then we are not using SAS at all, it is purely based on PGP commandline tool.

REgards,

Nishant

Re: Decryption of PGP encrypted external dataset

Kurt_Bremser — Sat, 02 Apr 2016 08:29:41 GMT

@NAwasthi wrote:

Hi Kurt,

Thanks for the response.

Does this means that encrypted file can be placed on SAS server(Unix box), PGP command line Tool will decrypt the file and the file can be used by SAS,. Is my iunderstanding is correct?

If that is correct then we are not using SAS at all, it is purely based on PGP commandline tool.

REgards,

Nishant

Well, since SAS does not have a built-in tool for PGP decryption, you need to use an external one. But you can start/control that decryption process from within SAS, either by running the CLI tool with call system or the x statement, or by directly using it as a filter in a filename pipe.