Microsoft Office 2000/Visual Basic Programmer's Guide

Important Considerations When Using a Database Password

Take the following items into consideration when you use a database password:

• Setting a database password doesn't prevent someone from using a disk editor or other utility program to read your data without opening the database. To prevent this as well, encrypt your database. For more information about encrypting a database, see "Encrypting a Database" later in this chapter.
  
  
• Any user who knows the database password and has access to the Unset Database Password command can change or clear the password, unless you remove the Administer permission on the database for all users and groups except the database administrator. Similarly, if you want to prevent users from setting a password on a database, remove the Administer permission on the database for those users or groups. By default, the Users group, the Admins group, and the creator (owner) of the database all have Administer permission on the database. For more information about permissions, see "Permissions" later in this chapter. Additionally, tools are available for Microsoft Office 2000 that allow system administrators to disable the user interface for setting database and document passwords. For information about how administrators can disable the password user interface, see the Microsoft Office 2000 Resource Kit (Microsoft Press, 1999).

  Note   You can remove the Administer permission without establishing User-Level security, but any user who knows how to do so can restore the Administer permission by using the User and Group Permissions command on the Security submenu (Tools menu). If you want to make sure that no unauthorized user can set, clear, or change a database password, you must establish User-Level security in addition to removing the Administer permission.

• If you use a password to protect an Access database containing tables that are linked to another database, Access stores the password when the link is established. This means that any user who can open the database that contains the link can open the linked table. Additionally, Access stores the password in an unencrypted form. If this will compromise the security of the password-protected database, you should not use a database password to protect the database. Instead, you should establish User-Level security to control access to sensitive data in that database. For more information about User-Level security, see "Access User-Level Security" later in this chapter.