In addition, Odom's Tennessee Pride uses the Actuate Spreadsheet Application Platform development tool to prevent users from changing cells within a spreadsheet, he said. The tool also lets the company prevent users from directly accessing the database to try to build reports, he said.

The company plans to create an additional layer of security in a few months by using Actuate's new Actuate 9 enterprise reporting suite, which is scheduled to ship later this year, Hader added. The tool will allow the company to fine-tune spreadsheet security so that users will be limited to which portions of a spreadsheet they can see, based upon their roles in the company.

Mark Lack, planning and financial analysis manager at Mueller Inc. in Ballinger, Texas, said his company in May expanded its BI security efforts by integrating its Cognos 8 tools from Ottawa-based Cognos Inc. with its Active Directory services, using a link included in the Cognos tool set. Lack said Active Directory is used to maintain corporate security policies.

Until May, the manufacturer of steel buildings and metal roofing was using the native BI security included in the previous version of the Cognos BI suite, he said.

"[Now] you have the locked, tight security of our ERP system that people can't get into," Lack said. "[The Cognos native] security was used to assign accessibility to different aspects of the software versus to lock down and secure and keep people out of the system. By using [Active Directory services], you can pass through the different levels of security into the BI system and then make the assignments from there."