Back it up for sure, but what are you protecting it from?
If protecting records and objects, then apply Access security implementing user/group security.
If protecting the file itself, then have your network admin help you setup a network directory with permissions of read/write, but not delete/rename/move/and...etc. Delete permissions are nice so Access can delete the .ldb file and you can see when it is open, but I believe Access will still run fine if it doesn't have permissions to delete the .ldb file. But you might want to double check on that.
With this, it shouldn't need to be hidden.
Or am I misunderstanding what you want to do?
Mike Dorthick