Securing data

[Steve Bu]

Hi,

I have a client whose requirement is for a database for each of his sales
staff.
He wanted the Front-end for each Access (2000) db to be on a the sales staff
local p.c.with the respective db's to be on the office administrator's p.c.
(acting as a server) on a local network. He is now concerned that the
database(s) could be copied and is asking if there is any way to secure the
individual databases whilst still allowing access by staff and the printing
of individual records.

Thanks......

 

[Scott McDaniel]

Access provides User Level Security (ULS), which is the most secure method
you can use with Access. Combined with OS security, it's about as good as
you can get with Access. However, in order for a user to use an Access
database, they must have read/write/create/delete perms on the directory
housing the backend, so they could definitely copy it. Implementing ULS
would just make it more difficult to do much with the file in the event they
did copy it. If your client wants a more secure platform, they could move to
a server type engine like MS Sql Server, Oracle, MySQL etc etc

Here's the Access Security FAQ:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=/support/access/content/secfaq.asp

There are also several other resources available ... Joan Wild's page has
links to most of them:

http://www.jmwild.com/Accesssecurity.htm

Why would each staff member have their own database? That sounds like a
maintenance nightmare ... could they not share a database?

 

[Steve Bu]

Thanks Scott for your response,

I will lookup the links you have suggested.

(Why would each staff member have their own database? That sounds like a

maintenance nightmare ... could they not share a database?)

I have inherited this way of working as this is how the client has
previously setup his databases, however it now may be the time for him to
have a rethink and move platforms to resolve the security problem and keep
all the data in one database.


Regards

Steve Bu