Due to shared hosting and the nature of my web application, I need the yafnet connections strings to be encrypted, such as you can do in asp.net 2.0 via the method:

section.SectionInformation.ProtectSection("DataProtectionConfigurationProvider");

I host from multiple servers (local,alpha,beta and live), and have to encrypt after I upload due to different machine config setups. I realize anyone with programatic capability that has access to the machine.config file can hack it, but it's better than nothing. Even though that's who I'm trying to protect myself against... Only other option would be to create another database just for the forum with a different login. My site is fully integrated into the forum, and that just makes it more complicated (and more $$$ a month to host it)

http://www.loneaspen.com 

The forum is invisible until you have registered on the site. No Guest access allowed, registration is free and simple. For now I have disabled/not uploaded the forum to the alpha and beta sites, that's my only option now.