Deep Dive the User Level Security in Your Access

In this article we introduce you to the concept of user level security in Ms Access and the benefits it offers to database administrators.

If you are using MS Access for storing data, you will have lots of in-built security options to choose from, for protecting your databases. You might opt for database password, user level security, encryption options and more. Through encryption and database passwords, you can make the complete database inaccessible for all those users who do not have encryption key. Although this might help keeping the database safe, it might also hinder the work progress, because often legitimate users might also be the ones without the encryption key. To avoid this kind of situation, you should opt for user level security in MS Access.

If you have used the row level security in SQL Server, then using user level security in MS Access will not be difficult for you. However, for those who are not familiar with user level security feature; it is the special kind of security feature which allows you to limit the access users to certain parts of the databases. Meaning, you can decide which tables in a database should be accessible for a particular department, and inaccessible for another. Through this feature you can limit the access of database users without encrypting the database and making it totally unavailable.

With the help of the user level security feature, you can now decide which part of the database should be accessed by only the accounts department, the HR department and various other departments. It ensures that there is no unwanted access to any part of the database by anyone with insufficient rights.

Implementing User Level Security in MS Access

The steps for implementing the user level security in MS Access are as follows:

1. Click on ‘Tools’, select ‘Security’, and then click on ‘User Level Security Wizard’.
2. In the Security Wizard, select ‘Create a New Workgroup Information File’ and click on ‘Next’.
3. In this step you will have to fill in the details of your Workgroup Information file and create a Workgroup ID (WID). Within this step, you will also have to make a choice between making this your ‘Default Workgroup Profile’, or ‘Creating a shortcut to the security enhanced database’. End this step by clicking ‘Next’.
4. This step will allow you to decide whether you want to secure all parts of your database or a few. De-select the ones you do not want to secure, to secure all, click ‘Next’.
5. In this step you can select the groups that you want to be enabled in the database. Every group will have separate set of permissions. You can select one and see what are the required permissions. Click ‘Next’.
6. In this step you can decide if you want to assign permissions to the user group or not. Click ‘Next’.
7. Now you can decide who do you want to be the users in the database and give them all unique passwords and ids. Click ‘Next’.
8. After deciding users, you can decide which group you want to put the user in. Click ‘Next’.
9. This is the last step, here you have to create a backup file for your database. Click ‘Finish’

Despite Best Security Measures in Place, a Database can get Corrupted due to a Virus Attack

Access databases can easily fall prey to virus attacks which target Windows based computers. After you have removed the virus using an antivirus tool, you still would need to recover the contents from the damaged Access file. To do so, just run the DataNumen Access Repair tool and sit back. This sophisticated application can bring back all the records while maintaining complete data integrity. Moreover the application can complete the process within minutes and it even supports the recovery of custom data content like indexes, saved queries etc.

Author Introduction:

Vivian Stevens is a data recovery expert in DataNumen, Inc., which is the world leader in data recovery technologies, including repair mdf db and excel recovery software products. For more information visit www.datanumen.com