2005 Encryption - Symmetric Keys

Hi There

We have been playing around with encryption in 2005. I cannot find a BOL topic that discusses dropping encryption objects such as keys.

We do the followign steps:

Create master key with password, then we create a certificate using the master key, we then create a symmetric key using this certificate and encrypt data columns.

But what i find worrying is that you can then drop the symmetric key , there are no warnings that you have objects dependant on this key for decryption.

Once you have dropped the key you cannot decrypt the data anymore?

Also the key defults the expiration date to 1 year.

WHat happens after 1 year when you have encrypted data and an expired key, or someone drops the key ? How can you ever decrypt the data after that ?

You can backup master keys nd certificates but not symmetric keys?

It seems to be that youc an very easily orphan encrypted data by the loss of the symmetric key for whatever reason, is this correct ?

Thanx