Encrypting the Connection String
If you need to encrypt or decrypt the connection string, I found a great resource that you can access. It is available on: http://aspnet.4guysfromrolla.com/articles/021506-1.aspx. It shows you how to do it programmatically, and through the aspnet_regiis utility.
One point to note; I used the RSA provider, and I got an error when deploying to a remote host. I don't know if the encryption needs to be established on the remote server, or if it was that the provider was not installed on the host machine. I can't think it would be the latter, so ensure that it works before you deploy.