The Overall Road Map


Before I provide you with the individual directions, I will explain how the book is organized and give you a brief rundown on what you can expect to find in each chapter. Essentially, I have split the book into four chapter threads that deal with different aspects of protecting and securing your Access database. Introductions to the chapter threads and the chapters follow.

The Options and Attributes Chapters

Access is a very versatile product, and you can vary the way that it works and what people see by changing the startup and database options and the attributes of objects in Database window.

Chapter 2: Protecting Your Database with Startup Options

Startup options will make it difficult for users to modify your database objects and data. They will also direct the user to employ the user interface that you intended for them to use and, as you will find out later, you will want to be aware of a number of issues if you want to protect the database options. Even though they seem easy to use, you have to be careful about how you set them up if you want users to continue using them.

Chapter 3: Using Database Options and Attributes to Protect Data and Objects

Find out which of the 50 or so database options will protect or expose your database. You will also learn how to hide objects in the Database window so that users, who are exploring the objects through the Database window or the importing interface, are less likely to stumble on your important data and objects.

The Protect and Improve Your Database Chapters

There is more to protection and security of an Access database than just stopping people from doing or seeing things. These chapters explain why you have to set up your database in a certain way, how you can recover from object changes or unintentional deletions, user surveillance, and specific improvements offered by changes to toolbars and menus .

Chapter 4: Providing a Solid Foundation with Good Programming Practices

This chapter will show you how to launch your Access software, how to split your database into software and data, and how to set up error handing. These issues are necessary background topics when you are setting up Access protection and security.

Chapter 5: Backing up and Recovering Your Databases

It goes without saying that backups are important. This chapter shows you how to make additional copies of your database and back up the data and objects in them. More importantly, it shows you how to recover them.

Chapter 6: User and Object Surveillance

Find out who is using your database and how they are using it. This important surveillance information can help you with administration issues such as asking users to log off the database for maintenance and upgrades of the database or the network. It can also assist you in targeting security for your database. Auditing user activities is an important part of the protection process.

Chapter 7: Protecting Your Database with Menus and Toolbars

Find out the tricks of the trade for building menus and toolbars, and then how you can apply those toolbars to your database by using either form and report properties or the Access startup options. By setting up menus and toolbars correctly, your database will be easier to use and harder for most users to crack.

The Internal Database Security Chapters

If you want to lay claim to having security in an Access database, you really have to implement some form of workgroup (user-level) security. These chapters detail how to set up a more secure workgroup environment, the bigger security issues, and the specifics of securing the different types of objects in the database. Included in the chapters are strategies that allow you to avoid the pitfalls of password-cracking software, Access importing options, and solutions to the most illusive issue of all, data protection.

Chapter 8: Developing Workgroup Security

First up, you will learn how to set up a developer's workgroup file and why it is an important tool for every Access developer. You will also find out how to achieve a lot of security and protection without producing too complex a security design and how to create a database that is not susceptible to password-cracking software. In this chapter, you will also find a complete list of all the driving instructions relating to workgroup security that covers all the internal database security chapters.

Chapter 9: Security Concerns, Encryption, and Database Passwords

Find out about the tools and Access menu options that can readily punch holes in your supposedly secure Access database. In the process, learn why you need to set up your workgroup security in a certain way and understand why database encryption and database passwords are more applicable as a spoiler rather than a security defense mechanism in their own right.

Chapter 10: Securing Data with Workgroup Security

This chapter takes you through the conventional ways of protecting your data with workgroup security and then outlines how you can set up your workgroup files so that password-cracking software will not be very effective. Get instructions on incorporating Windows 2000/XP security so that your users simulate logging on to the database by using Windows user accounts. Finally, if you contemplate distributing important Access data outside the company network, be wary.

Chapter 11: Object Protections and Security Measures

Learn the intricacies of the all-important MDE database format, as well as many other ways to protect the queries, forms, reports, macros, and modules in your database. Specifically, get instructions for hiding linked tables, using remote queries, opening your forms and reports so your users cannot edit them, and how to use data access pages with workgroup files.

Chapter 12: Protecting and Securing Your Database with the Operating System

No matter what internal protection and security measures you add to your Access database, you can improve your protection substantially by using a modern operating system with a file server or peer-to-peer server. This chapter details how you can set up a group of Windows users that has permission to open the folder that your database resides in. If you really want to improve this protection to a secure level, use the detailed instructions in this chapter or show them to your network administrator so that no one can browse the folder and subfolders where the databases are stored. This process also makes it very difficult to copy the databases from these folders. You'll also get a brief review of many other issues, like external security, personnel, and other related computer security topics.

The Appendices

Appendix A has a list of all the workgroup security information used in the chapter. Appendix B details the instructions for registering Access Workbench 1.3, a program I wrote. Appendix C is a free bonus chapter from Russell Sinclair's Apress book, Access to SQL Server . This chapter discusses the reasons for and against migrating an Access database to SQL Server and the difference between Access and SQL Server.




Real World Microsoft Access Database Protection and Security
Real World Microsoft Access Database Protection and Security
ISBN: 1590591267
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 176

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