In the healthcare and financial industries, where database applications often process confidential information, using authentication and encryption to secure access to data has become a common practice. Indeed, for companies that are affected by industry regulations such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), securing data is an absolute requirement. For many other industries, however, ensuring the security of reporting systems and the databases they access remains a low priority on system designers' and administrators' to-do lists because of its seeming complexity.

It ...