Chapter 16: Securing Shared Folders and Printers

Overview

One of the first human interaction skills that we're all taught is the importance of sharing. Children are encouraged to share toys during playtime, and adults borrow things from neighbors all the time. Although there's little question that sharing has benefits, it can also have a downside - remember the hedge trimmer that you lent out six months ago and haven't seen heads or tails of since? How about the corner of your garage stacked full of items borrowed from your neighbor? When not managed properly, the whole business of sharing things can turn into one big ugly mess (often quite literally!).

Although slightly different than the world of tools, household items, or even the proverbial cup of sugar, sharing resources is perhaps the most important concept behind setting up a computer network. When you have a network at home or at the office users can share resources like printers and files almost seamlessly. A user sitting at one PC can send documents to a printer connected to another computer, or share a certain folder on her PC such that all other users can view, store, and manage the files it contains from across the network. From making better use of resources to making access to information more convenient, networks and sharing go hand in hand.

Unfortunately, in much the same way that your neighbor may not have gotten around to returning your extension ladder, sharing on a computer network doesn't always run as smoothly as it should. For example, if you grant all others on your network access to an expensive color laser printer, you might find the kids using it to print every color photo they can find. Or, you may have shared a folder on your computer to enable your spouse to open an important document, only to learn that he or she deleted all of the files in the folder by accident. Any time that you share anything, you're taking at least a small risk.

When you want to take advantage of the benefits of sharing resources on a computer network but reduce your risk exposure at the same time, you need to explore ways in which you can secure things to an appropriate degree. For example, you might choose not to allow some users to access a certain printer, or deny a user the ability to do anything more than open and read the files in a shared folder. In this chapter you learn about the File and Printer Sharing features of Windows Vista, and specifically how to implement restrictions on how other network users can make use of shared resources.