encrypted fields

Payload Encrypted Fields

Install

pnpm add @oversightstudio/encrypted-fields @payloadcms/ui

About

This package brings encrypted fields to Payload. It provides an encryptedField function that allows you to easily add encrypted fields to your collections.

It supports most field field types, including ones like select or number with hasMany enabled. Additionally, it fully integrates with Payload’s field customization options and lifecycle events, making it behave just like any other field—just encrypted.

The package automatically encrypts and decrypts field values using hooks, meaning you don’t need any extra setup to use encrypted fields in the admin panel or through the API.

Encryption

This package uses AES-256-CTR encryption, combined with your PAYLOAD_SECRET and a random IV. The encrypted value is stored as a string in the database.

For a deeper dive into how this encryption works, check out this blog post by Payload. It explains the same encryption approach but for a simple text field. This package expands on that to support more field types and make integration seamless.

Since encryption fundamentally converts data into an unreadable format, this package JSON stringifies your data before encrypting it and automatically parses it back after decryption to retain it's original data type.

Tradeofs

Using field encryption comes with some tradeoffs:

• Larger data size – Encrypted values take up more space than raw values.
• No sorting or filtering – Since the data is encrypted at rest, the database cannot sort or filter it.
• Performance overhead – Encrypting and decrypting data adds some processing time.

These tradeoffs are standard when working with encrypted data, but they’re well worth it if protecting sensitive information is your goal.

Usage

Important: Make sure the PAYLOAD_SECRET environment variable is set before using this package.

import { CollectionConfig } from 'payload'
import { encryptedField } from '@oversightstudio/encrypted-fields'

export const SensitiveDataCollection: CollectionConfig = {
  slug: 'sensitive-data',
  fields: [
    encryptedField({
      name: 'name',
      type: 'text',
    }),
    encryptedField({
      name: 'age',
      type: 'number',
    }),
    encryptedField({
      name: 'birthDate',
      type: 'date',
    }),
    encryptedField({
      name: 'traits',
      type: 'select',
      options: [
        { label: 'Awesome', value: 'awesome' },
        { label: 'Based', value: 'based' },
        { label: 'Goat', value: 'goat' },
      ],
      hasMany: true,
    }),
  ],
}

Supported Field Types

Field Type	Supported
text	✅ Yes
number	✅ Yes
select	✅ Yes
checkbox	✅ Yes
email	✅ Yes
date	✅ Yes
json	✅ Yes
textarea	✅ Yes
code	✅ Yes
radio	✅ Yes
point	❌ Not yet supported
richText	❌ Not yet supported

All other missing field types (like as ui, tabs, etc.) are of course not supported, as they do not store user data that needs encryption.

Credits

• Shoutout to Paul for being a real one.