PC Magazine Windows Vista Security Solutions

Sharing resources like folders and printers on a network is one of the primary reasons for implementing a network in the first place. However, it's important to ensure that shared resources are properly secured in a manner that meets your needs and requirements. Failing to properly implement security settings puts your shared resources at risk, and may lead to them being accidentally deleted, modified, or otherwise misused. Keep the following points in mind when securing shared folders and printers:

• Share folders and printers that you want other network users to access.

• Configure shared folder and printer security settings so that users only have the level of access to the resource that they actually require.

• Never give any user a greater degree of access to a shared resource than they require. For example, if you only want users to open and read files in a shared folder, grant them the Allow Read permission, rather than Allow Full Control.

• If you want to stop all users from accessing a particular resource that is currently shared, disable its sharing setting.