Encrypt Survey Responses

If you need to collect sensitive data, you can encrypt survey responses to protect the confidentiality of the data.

Warning! While encryption is designed to keep unauthorized entities from being able to access the data, we also are unable to access encrypted survey responses. If you enable encryption on a survey question, you must maintain the private key in order to decrypt responses.

In this article

What is Encryption?

Encryption is the process of encoding information, taking the original data and scrambling it so that it appears random. This allows only authorized parties to decrypt and understand the original information.

The primary purpose of encryption is to protect the confidentiality of digital data in transit over networks and stored on computers and storage devices. In addition to security, the adoption of encryption is often driven by the need to meet compliance regulations. A number of organizations and standards bodies either recommend or require sensitive data to be encrypted in order to prevent unauthorized third parties or threat actors from accessing the data.

How Survey Encryption Works

By encrypting questions in a survey, you can ensure that the answer to the question is encrypted on the responder's computer before it is sent to our servers. The decryption can only be performed by those who have access to the survey reporting and the private key that is generated when first enabling encrypting in a survey. 

This will ensure that sensitive information entered into a survey is stored in the encrypted form on our servers. However, it also means that if you lose the private key, it will not be possible to decrypt the survey responses.

Encryption is enabled individually on each question. When you first choose to encrypt a question, you will be prompted to enable encryption for the survey. Enabling encryption will generate a public and private key specific to that survey. The private key will be downloaded to your computer. We recommend that you safely store this key on your computer and make backup copies of the key. Without this key, the encrypted responses cannot be decrypted.

Once responses have been received for the survey and you want to view the encrypted responses, the system will prompt you to select the private key for the survey to decrypt the responses. The decryption is performed on your computer and the key is never stored or sent to our servers. This further ensures that the information that was encrypted is only accessible with the private key that you control.

Encryption is available for the following question types:

  • Free Text
  • Multiple Choice
  • Matrix
  • File Upload

Limitations of the encryption feature:

  • Multiple Responses in survey settings must be set to "Yes" when using encrypted questions.
  • Survey Actions cannot be used with encrypted questions.
  • The following options in question settings cannot be used with encrypted questions:
    • Scores (For multiple choice and matrix question types)
    • Response Limits
    • Page redirection via “If chosen go to”
  • Encrypted questions are not displayed in charts in survey reporting.
  • Encrypted questions cannot be used with the filter responses feature in survey reporting.
  • Encrypted questions cannot be used in with the survey executive summary feature.

Encrypt Survey Questions

  1. Click the Show text link next to Settings to access additional options.
  2. Tick the Encrypt option and click Update button.
  3. If this is the first question in the survey you are encrypting, the system will show a dialog box with information relating to the encryption. Click the Enable Encryption button.
  4. The system will prompt you to download the private key which will be used for decryption. Download the key and safely store it in your computer.
Warning! We recommend that you safely store this key on your computer and make backup copies of the key. Without this key, the encrypted responses cannot be decrypted.

Decrypt Survey Responses

  1. Click Reports in the main navigation menu.
  2. Click the Surveys tab.
  3. Click the title of your survey.
  4. To the top right, there will be a message box which will ask for the private key to decrypt the responses. Click the link in the text box to provide the private key which will decrypt the survey responses.
  5. If you do not use above message box to decrypt the responses, you can click on an individual response and use the Decrypt option.
  6. If you want to export the survey responses, click the Print/Export drop down menu and select CSV. If the survey has not been previously decrypted, you will be promoted to provide the private key before downloading the decrypted file. If you do not provide the private key, the encrypted questions will remain encrypted in the exported file.
  7. If you navigate away from the survey reports page, you will be required to provide the private key again to decrypt the survey responses. This is because we do not store the private key on our servers.

You may also want to install software to store the private key on your computer. This software can also be used to decrypt encrypted survey responses manually provided you have the private key. We recommend:

Mac OS: GPG Suite https://gpgtools.org/
Windows: GPG4Win https://gpg4win.org/download.html