SECURITY - NewEra/ODBC

We are considering the use of NewEra (V3 ?) to develop a client/server application accessing an Online 7.2 database. Are we correct in saying that NewEra uses OBDC to access Informix databases (via INET) ? If so how do we prevent users using other ODBC compliant products such as MSQuery ( which comes with MSOffice) from accessing the Informix ODBC data source directly and thus bypassing any validation/integrity checks built into the NewEra application. Hopefully I have been mislead and NewEra calls INET directly !! One other question: Does INET encrypt passwords before passing them over the network and if not should this be considered a security risk. Any help on the above points greatly appreciated. David.