Help with password encryption

simple ways to protect userids and passwords.

[harmonyjones]

We are running a database driven web site with thousands of registered users.

I would like to know what the industry standard /best practices are with respect to password protection. We have a SQL 2000 DB running on W2K server, and one of the tables in the DB stores the user ids and passwords.

How secure is this data and how can we protect this from hackers ? Can we store the data in encrypted form ? Does SQL Server / W2K have any security features that can help us ?

Any help would be appreciated.

[DaveAtIFG]

Caution: I'm far from an expert! A good start may be your W2K help file, look under "encryption, best practices." The EFS (Encrypted File System) may be what you're looking for. Also, this forum [winnetmag.com] is on topic and fairly active. Lastly, my apologies... This is the second time today that I suggested you try a different forum. My intent is that others here at WebmasterWorld will see your questions floated to the top of the active list and be able to offer some help. If not, at least you have some places to dig further.

[Lisa]

I would look into MD5 encription. I don't use Microsoft technology on the web. But in unix MD5 functions are in most of the programming languages like PHP and Perl.

[EliteWeb]

There should be a way to select a field as a password field which should encrypt the data. Atleast there is with mySQL, and database stuff works the same for the most part ;0

[Lisa]

I would use a standard encription scheme. MySQL does have a built in password() function. But if I had to change to another database that data in that field would be garbage.