Sharing and security

Operating systems have to balance the conflicting goals of convenient resource sharing and protection against unauthorized resource access. Windows offers a variety of mechanisms such as user and group permissions, shares, and access control lists with inheritance. On the other hand, Linux has a much simpler implementation of users and groups. As a computing professional, you need to understand the trade-offs between sharing and security within various operating systems.

For this Discussion, read Chapter 9,“Network File System (NFS),” and Chapter 13, “Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP),” of the Red Hat Linux 4: Red Hat Linux Reference Guide, the “Windows Management Instrumentation” resource, and the “Lightweight Directory Access Protocol” resource. These four resources can be located in this week’s Learning Resources.

Post by Day 3 a proposed solution to resource sharing and security against unauthorized resource access that you view as the ideal balance between sharing, protection, and complexity of implementing users and groups in an operating system of your choice. Provide an instance that comes close to your ideal balance between resource sharing and protection against unauthorized resource access.

Respond by Day 6 to at least two of your colleagues’ postings in one or more of the following ways:

Describe any security issues or benefits that you envision with the proposed solution.
Describe any file access issues that may exist with the proposed solution.
Return to this Discussion in a few days to read the responses to your initial posting. Note what you have learned and/or any insights you have gained as a result of the comments your colleagues made.