[mca] October Newsletter
- From: "Mean Drake" <meandrake@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <mca@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 2 Nov 2003 15:24:38 +0530
Untitled Document
In This Issue
Editorial
File sharing in Windows XP
News & alerts
EDITORIAL
It's after quite a while that my newsletter is not concentrating on security
issues and virus attacks. The past month has been quite silent as far as virus
outbreaks are concerned giving all of us a well deserved respite and allowing
us to get more work done out of our computers. I hope most of you have been
following my ergonomic tips in the last newsletter and are feeling more
comfortable sitting long hours on the computer.
This month the main thing I want to discuss is about file and folder security
in Windows XP. I have seen a lot of people posting in internet forums about
this and there is a lot that needs to be cleared up in this area. So that's the
feature article for this month. I hope this is of use to many of you either now
or in the future if you don't already have Windows XP and plan to upgrade to it
later.
The fully illustrated pdf version of the newsletter that you can save to your
disk is available here:
http://mca.freewebpage.org/mcaOct03.pdf (Acrobat Reader needed to view).
Till next month...
Mean.
File sharing in Windows XP
Today, at work or at home one needs to share our computers with other users.
Early versions of Windows like Windows 95 and even later versions for home
users like 98 and ME did not provide for privacy for different users of the
system. Windows NT, Windows 2000 and now Windows XP allow for this privacy and
you can keep your files and folders secret. This is dependent to a large extent
on the file system used on the hard disk and in Windows XP also whether you
have the Home edition or the Professional Edition. The Home edition does not
let you control too much security at file and folder level. Also, if the file
system is FAT32, then not much security can be enforced but NTFS system allows
for much more customisation of the security parameters. Let's proceed to see
the insides of how one would enforce security.
By default, in a new installation of Windows XP, simple file sharing is turned
on by default. Documents that are to be shared among all users are kept in the
Shared Documents folder. In order to share any folder, right click, see
properties and look on the Sharing Tab. Turn on Sharing across the network and
Give it a share name. If you check mark "Allow network users to change my
files" option, they will get write access too.
Another feature for sharing files in Windows is through the Shared Documents
folder. Just drag and drop any folder/file into this folder and other users who
log on locally will have access to it too. For folder in the user's profile in
Documents and Settings, there is an option on the sharing tab to "Make the
folder private" so other's will not be able to see it.
Secure sharing:
These are the two easy ways of file sharing in Windows XP. But these are not
going to satisfy the needs of all users, especially in a business environment
or even sometimes in a home environment. Say the annual tax returns of the
family should be seen by your dad but not your kid brother who might
accidentally ruin the figures. In this case the simple sharing described above
will not be effective. You need a more complex setup.
The first step needed is to turn off simple file sharing in Folder Options.
The second step here is to understand the setup the users. A user who is
defined as administrator has full rights to the system and can carry out all
functions. Other users can be defined with limited rights and can be classified
into groups. A groups can be defined in the Computer Management console to be
found in Control Panel>Administrative Tools. If groups are defined here then
adding users to groups automatically defines the amount of access they will
have to the system. The control over what each group is allowed to do is
defined in Control Panel>Administrative Tools>Local Security Policies.
Now that the user groups and users have been setup and the policies defined for
how much a user is allowed to access the system, then all that remains is a
simple task of assigning permissions. Once simple file sharing has been turned
off, if folder properties are seen using a right click, there is now a security
tab present that lists the users allowed to access the folders and what degree
of access they have. Folders inherit these permissions from partitions and
subfolders from folders though this inheritance can be turned off. See
accompanying image to understand how user level access can be fine tuned. For
example a group called Accountants may be allowed to view and edit your account
files while a group called Secretaries may be allowed to only read (hence
print) these files while a group of Artists may not even view them.
This is just a basic discussion to get you started. There are more advanced
topics like folders that can be shared over the network. This is enabled from
the sharing tab and here to one can restrict other users over the network and
grant access to only certain individuals. More and more security can be defined
depending on your needs and your understanding of the settings.
News and Alerts
Virus Alert.
Mimail.c and its variant Mimail.D are doing the rounds. Read more about them
here:
http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.mimail.c@xxxxxxx
Napster returns:
After disappearing from the scene due to a lot of legal hassles, Napster is now
back with version 2.0 and a legalised pay for play system. It is now a division
of Roxio. See the site at www.napster.com
Office 2003 launched:
Microsoft has launched their Office System 2003, an upgrade to the Office XP. A
lot of new features but the most significant modifications are to Outlook where
more security, ease of use and spam filtering has been built in.
http://office.microsoft.com/home/default.aspx
Bye for now,
Please do send in your feedback, comments, suggestions and brickbats to me by
clicking Reply and sending your valuable feedback.
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