The invention provides a transparent encryption infrastructure which allows the user to point-and-click on columns and tables to encrypt data. The creation of triggers and views are also easily implemented, to encrypt and decrypt data, to manage the encryption keys and to grant and revoke access to a column. Public and private key pairs are hashed and encrypted with a valid password. The process or encryption starts by creating a randomly generated symmetrical key, encrypting the symmetrical key with the private key for each user authorized to decrypt the data, and storing the encrypted symmetrical key, along with the user's name and the column name, in the database.