- Simple vs. Advanced Sharing Settings
- Sharing Permissions VS File (NTFS) permissions
- Organizing Users and Groups
Sharing Permissions VS File (NTFS) permissions
Sharing and file permissions are two separate file security techniques in the computing world. Thanks to the NTFS file system, file permissions primarily help control file access on the local computer.
For example, Joe User can't access Jane's My Documents folder from his Windows account on a PC they both share, and system files are protected by hackers and from misjudgment by Joe or Jane.
Sharing permissions is an extension to the file permissions; they let you control access to folders from the network. See Figure 4 for an example of a file's NTFS permissions.
Keep in mind that sharing permissions are only definable for folders, whereas file permissions exist for both files and folders.
Additionally, it's important to understand that file permissions always trump sharing permissions. For example, if Jane shares a folder on the network for access by Joe on all the computers, but the local file permissions of the folder don't include Joe, he can't access the folder on the network. But for folders to be accessible from over the network, sharing must be enabled. Just because Jane's folder has her username listed in the file permissions doesn't mean that she can access it from other computers.