Access 2003 VBA Programmer's Reference

16.6. Summary

In most business environments, it is good practice and may even be essential to institute some level of security for an Access database. There are several factors that help determine what is appropriate for the situation. Typically it is a combination of methods that will provide the most cost-effective solution. And, implementing Access security alone is typically not sufficient. If the risks are sufficient, firewalls, network security, and strong business rules are critical compliments to what Access can provide.

For the most part, an MDE will protect the code and prevent users from intentionally or inadvertently making changes to the database application itself. However, just having an MDE file does not protect the data. Encoding data will prevent (or at least provide a serious challenge to) unauthorized users from viewing or manipulating the data. Instituting user-level security can help enforce business rules and regulate which users and groups can do what with specific database objects. User-level security can be complicated to set up and to maintain. However, it is worth the effort. Network security is critical to protecting the file itself. In many cases, without the proper network security, a user that could not open a database can merely copy or even delete it.

In addition to determining the types of security to implement for each application, there are several options for how to work with security. Many developers may want to use a combination of the wizard ...