Data privacy and ethical considerations ensure the security of databases by respecting individual rights while upholding ethical considerations when collecting, managing, and using information. Nowadays, despite having regulations that help to protect citizens and organizations, we have been presented with thousands of instances of data breaches, unauthorized access, and misuse of data related to such individuals and organizations. In this paper, we propose ethical considerations and best practices associated with critical data and the role of the database administrator who helps protect data. First, we suggest best practices for database administrators regarding data minimization, anonymization, pseudonymization and encryption, access controls, data retention guidelines, and stakeholder communication. Then, we present a case study that illustrates the application of these ethical implementations and best practices in a real-world scenario, showing the approach in action and the benefits of privacy. Finally, the study highlights the importance of a comprehensive approach to deal with data protection challenges and provides valuable insights for future research and developments in this field.

Ensuring data privacy and security in sensitive domains such as healthcare remains a critical challenge. Homomorphic Encryption (HE) offers a promising approach by enabling computations directly on encrypted data, but the diversity of available schemes requires careful evaluation before practical adoption. This work conducts a comparative study of six representative HE schemes: BGV, TFHE, Paillier, RSA without padding, BFV, and CKKS. It is adopted a five-step strategy, encompassing preprocessing, cryptographic setup, encryption, homomorphic execution, and decryption, applied to a healthcare dataset. Overall, the comparative analysis underscores that no single scheme is universally optimal. The choice of an HE scheme must be guided by the nature of the required operations, acceptable precision levels, and computational constraints of the target healthcare scenario.

Homomorphic Encryption (HE) has emerged as a promising approach for data processing without exposing sensitive information. Despite significant advances, the practical strategies for the integration of HE into widely used database management systems (DBMSs) remain limited due to performance constraints and architectural challenges. This paper explores HE integration strategies within DBMS, focusing on SQL Server, PostgreSQL, and MariaDB. A methodology is proposed to assess the feasibility and performance of multiple HE schemes, including BFV, CKKS, BGV, TFHE, Paillier, and RSA (without padding). The evaluation considers different integration strategies, namely Python-based execution and native C++ extensions, across Windows and Debian environments. Experimental results obtained from four configurations demonstrate that the choice of HE scheme and integration strategy significantly impacts performance. Lattice-based schemes (BFV, CKKS, BGV) provide a balanced trade-off between functionality and efficiency, while TFHE incurs high computational costs due to its bit-level design. Native C++ integrations consistently outperform Python-based approaches, although the latter offer greater flexibility and ease of development. The findings highlight the feasibility of integrating HE into DBMS while emphasizing the importance of selecting appropriate schemes and integration mechanisms to meet application-specific requirements. The proposed evaluation framework provides preliminary insights into the relative behavior of different HE schemes and integration strategies under controlled experimental conditions, supporting future work on privacy-preserving DBMS design.