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NTFS Permissions

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by max455

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Hi All,

I've been asked to setup a home computer for a work colleague. It's running windows xp pro. On the second hard-drive (D:) I've created a folder called Janet (her name) and removed all the permissions that the folder had automatically inherited and unselected the "allow inheritance" option. I then added her account (Janet) to the list and selected "full control" to folder, sub-folders, and files. I did the same for the administrators group.

My questions are:
1) Is this the right of securing this folder?
2) Is it a problem that I removed access to the system account, creator owner, etc?
3) Am I correct in assuming that only Janet and the administrator group can access files in this folder?

4) Is it possible to make certain programs run in only Janet's account? Janet is a member of the Power Users group.

Thanks in advance! :-)

Max

5 replies

by scott_heath

I don't typically remove the system account, but and admin can take ownership and add it back if need be.

You can deny read\execute access on particular executables that you don't want Jent to run. Add her ID to the security list and check the deny box for Read & Execute.

by max455

Hi Scott,

Thanks for the reply. I removed the system account because I was worried that another user could start a program under that account which could then in turn access the data. Would this be the case?

Is there anything special I need to setup to make all the folders and files within the base folder (ie. Janet) inherit the permissions from that folder?

Also, I'm backing up that folder to an external hdd. The files are being copied over using SyncBack. All the permissions are being copied as well, as the ext hdd is ntfs formatted. If someone was to take the ext hdd, could they access the files?

Thanks,

Max

by scott_heath

If someone has physical access there is no such thing as security unless you are willing to encrypt the data. Windows file security would only stop the simplest attackers.

by max455

Yeah, that's what I thought too. So what I did was added an encrypted volume (using TrueCrypt with AES) to protect the most important data.
I figure this would make the data safe, that is, as long as someone doesn't run a keylogger on the box and gets the password for the encrypted volume that way.

I did warn her that as long as people can get physical access to the machine they can own it.

I guess there isn't much more I can do really, right?

Cheers,

Max

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