You might be able to change the permissions of a directory but that would not normally be available in a database. You do not mention whether your database is part of a platform CMS such as WP. Is the directory/folder a physical folder or generated by the CMS?

The database is from a Joomla system.
The folder is a server/physical folder with password protection added via the control panel from the host provider.

Note: password protection is added/edited via ".HTACCESS EDITOR" from the control panel of the hosting company.

the .htaccess file contents are processed by Apache before control is passed to Joomla.

the Joomla db would therefore have no effect on HTTP Basic Authentication.

Thanks for the info.
I recently ran into an issue after my web site was migrated to another host.
The password wouldn't work for the administrator directory so I couldn't get into the back end to work my site.
Does that mean that all I had to do was modify the migrated .htaccess file and I could have disabled the password protection?
My new host insisted that the only "fix" was to disable the password protection from the current active site and create a new backup so that backup could be used for a new migration.

it may require creating a new .htpasswd file or equivalent

password protection is added/edited via ".HTACCESS EDITOR" from the control panel of the hosting company

That may be the name of the function on the control panel, but note that this is not actually an .htaccess function; it's .htpasswd. Are you able to edit these files directly, or does the host not allow this? Both are fundamentally text files that can be modified in any text editor and uploaded via any ftp-type program. It's just the form of the filename (leading “.ht") that gives them their special potency. But it's a little odd that configuration files of any sort came along for the ride when moving hosts, which presumably meant physically moving the site to a new server.

That's a relief. I was beginning to doubt the competency of the techs at Hostinger.
At least I know that I didn't go through all of the trouble of creating the new backups for nothing. Thanks again.