Allowing access to your MySQL database requires authenticating with a MySQL username and password. You can customise which actions (privileges) each individual user can perform; greatly enhancing the security of your database.

Many providers provide just one MySQL user per database, however this can be impractical when building complex websites. For example; you may want to have a 'Read Only' user so that the scripts cannot make any changes to the database; or you may wish to grant `insert-only` permissions to another user - great for PCI-DSS compliance.