Field-Level AES-128 Encryption in Laravel-based E-Commerce for MSME Data Protection

Abstract

The increasing digitization of micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in e-commerce brings critical challenges in protecting customer data. Despite the widespread use of encrypted communication protocols such as HTTPS and TLS for secure data transmission, many MSMEs still fail to implement encryption at the data storage level. This means that once the data reaches the server, it is often stored in unencrypted form within the database. This study implemented AES-128 encryption at the field-level in a Laravel-based e-commerce system to protect MSME customer data. The encryption was applied to sensitive data fields and tested through black-box testing and benchmark analysis. A dataset of 10,000 records was used to compare performance between plaintext and encrypted operations. Results showed an average encryption overhead of 0.0409 seconds, indicating minimal impact on performance. The encryption-decryption process consistently returned correct outputs across all trials. This solution offers an affordable and scalable encryption model for MSMEs, enhancing customer data security without relying on external tools or infrastructure.