Welcome to the Community, ToddAndMargo.
All versions of QuickBooks company (QBW), backup (QBB), accountant's copy (QBA), and portable company (QBM) files are encrypted. To ensure the protection of your critical data, QuickBooks Desktop requires passwords for data files to meet certain complexity requirements.
Also, users whose files contain sensitive data such as credit card numbers, social security numbers, employer identification numbers, or who have "Credit Card Protection" on will be asked to set a complex password when signing in to the file after the update. To learn more about this one, check out this article: Password security for QuickBooks Desktop.
Also, Intuit depends upon proven safeguards to protect your business data and comply with the IRS security requirements. Please know that the requirements have tightened up a lot in all aspects of computing, including the accounting app. This is very important as it adds an extra security layer within your QuickBooks files. You can refer to this article for more information: Intuit Privacy Statement.
This information should get you pointed out in the right direction about the security requirements of QuickBooks. If there's anything else you need, please let me know by leaving a comment below. I'll be here to help you out.
