You can encrypt your connection string to a database. Let me rephrase that: you should encrypt data connections. Here is an example of encrypting a connection string and decryprting a connection string.
Create the Connection String in your App.Config:
connectionString="Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Data Source???;DatabaseName;" providerName="System.Data.OleDb" /
Form Code:
private void EncryptConnectionString() { System.Configuration.Configuration config = ConfigurationManager.OpenExeConfiguration(ConfigurationUserLevel.None); string provider = "DataProtectionConfigurationProvider"; ConfigurationSection connstrings = config.ConnectionStrings; connstrings.SectionInformation.ProtectSection(provider); connstrings.SectionInformation.ForceSave = true; config.Save(ConfigurationSaveMode.Full); } private void DecryptConnectionString() { System.Configuration.Configuration config = ConfigurationManager.OpenExeConfiguration(ConfigurationUserLevel.None); ConfigurationSection connstrings = config.ConnectionStrings; connstrings.SectionInformation.UnprotectSection(); connstrings.SectionInformation.ForceSave = true; config.Save(ConfigurationSaveMode.Full); } private void EncryptButton_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { EncryptConnectionString(); } private void DecryptButton_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { DecryptConnectionString(); }