Security : File Access Rights

Security : File Access Rights

File storage space on a computer network is usually shared by many different users. Some users will want to store confidential files which must not be accessible to other users. For example :

A teacher may want to store the answers to a test. The pupils at the school should not be able to read these.
A company's payroll department will need to store information about the rates of pay of all employees. Workers in other departments should not be able to see this.

It is also sometimes the case that some users should be able to change a file whilst other users should be able to read the information in the file but not change it. For example :

A teacher at a school may produce a document which explains to pupils what they should do to complete an assignment. The pupils should be able to read this document but not change it. The teacher, on the other hand, should be able to change the document if he wants to.

File Access Rights are used to determine what actions a user can take with a file. File access rights can be applied to individual files or all of the files in a directory. Example file access rights are :

Right	Explanation	Right	Explanation
Read Only	A user can read the data in a file but can not change it.	Change	A user can read the data in a file and change it but can not delete the file.
Append	A user can add data to the end of a file but can not change the data that is already in it.	Full Control	A user can do anything with a file.

The access rights for a particular file or directory can be set differently for different network users. To enable this a username and password system must be in use so that the computer can determine who is trying to access a file.

GCSE ICT Companion 04 - (C) P Meakin 2004