is it possible to encrypt a password column in Access?

[princess_kay]

Hi, i have a table in Access 2007 that has 3 columns, 'username', 'password' and 'template'. i was wondering is it possible in Access to encrpyt the passwords in the password column and if so how would i go about doing that?

thanks in advance.

 

[Trevor G]

Hi, i have a table in Access 2007 that has 3 columns, 'username', 'password' and 'template'. i was wondering is it possible in Access to encrpyt the passwords in the password column and if so how would i go about doing that?

thanks in advance.

Open the table in design view select the password field, in the General Properties below select the inputmask and then the elipse button on the right you can select password from there and it will only display the character type

 

[DCrake]

It's all right setting the property to pasword but it can easly be changed to view the password if you print the column.

 

[ChipperT]

There are ways to encrypt and decrypt any data from any column but many add a lot of overhead to the process. I would suggest that if security of that great a concern, you should switch from an Access DB backend to a SQL Server backend, where security is much more robust.

 

[princess_kay]

thank you all for your replies...

 

[princess_kay]

There are ways to encrypt and decrypt any data from any column but many add a lot of overhead to the process. I would suggest that if security of that great a concern, you should switch from an Access DB backend to a SQL Server backend, where security is much more robust.

hi do you know how i would upgrade the access table in the back end to an SQL server?

 

[boblarson]

You can also check out my example for encrypting/decrypting:
http://downloads.btabdevelopment.com/Samples/misc/SAMPLE-ENCRYPT_DECRYPT.zip

 

[The_Doc_Man]

You can encrypt a column but the implication is that you can never see the column again in cleartext directly. You will always need a form to encrypt and decrypt the value of that field for you.

You might look up the following on the web - CAPICOM - which lets you get to a "crypto" module that is inherent in Windows.

Basically, you create an encryption object with set {object} = CreateObject( "CAPICOM.EncryptedData.1" ) - after which you can encrypt or decrypt values as needed. A couple of other issues are involved, though.

First, you need a key.

Next, you need to choose an encryption algorithm. The U.S. Dept. of Defense considers the 3DES to be a good algorithm, for which the code is #3 (for triple-DES). Other standard algorithms are possible. You would probably NOT want to "roll your own."

Finally, you need a couple of routines to encrypt and decrypt. I recommend a web search for that, as there are several examples available.