Configuring the Encryption Block Size Attribute

The Aptify encryption mechanism processes entity records in blocks. Each block contains a sub-set of the total number of records in the entity. The Encryption Block Size attribute specifies the number of records in a block.
For example, if an entity contains 100 records and the Block Size is set to 10, the encryption mechanism would process records 1-10 as one block, records 11-20 as a second block, and so on.

By default, Aptify uses a block size of 1000 for all entities. If an entity contains less than 1000 records, the encryption mechanism will process all of the entity's records in one block.

The ideal block size varies from organization to organization, but, in general, it should balance the following factors:

• Speed: Using larger blocks will decrease the time it takes to encrypt a field in all records.
• Processing Power: Using a block that is too large may require more memory than the server has available. For example, processing 10 million records in one block will most likely exceed the processing capabilities of a typical database server.
• Status Updates: The encryption mechanism updates the Entity Save status window after it processes each block. Using smaller blocks provides more frequent status updates.
• Error Reporting: The encryption mechanism reports the status of a block and not the status of an individual record. If an error occurs during encryption, using smaller blocks makes it easier to identify which record caused the problem.

Follow these steps to configure the Encryption Block Size attribute for an entity:

1. Open the entity from the Entities service.
2. Click the Configuration tab.
3. Click the Attributes sub-tab.
4. Open a new Entity Attributes sub-type record.
   • Click the New Record... button, or right-click in the gray area and select New from the pop-up menu.
      
5. Enter Encryption Block Size in the Name field.
6. Enter the size of the block in the Value field.
   • Use a value of 1 or greater (integers only). Aptify uses the default block size of 1000 if the attribute's value is set to 0.
     
     
7. Enter an optional description, if desired.
8. Click OK to close the Entity Attributes record.
9. Click Save and Close to save the change and close the Entity record.
10. Close and reopen Aptify for the change to take effect.