Caution To restore an encrypted database, you need access to the certificate or asymmetric key used to encrypt that database. Without the certificate or asymmetric key, you can't restore that database ...

If you have purchased certificates from a third-party certificate vendor, follow the instructions provided by the vendor. SQL Server 2000 permits encrypted connections over all network libraries by ...

In SQL Server 2012 that dependency is now enforced by code. Attempting to drop a certificate currently in use on a database will fail.