In this 'Feature Focus' for our FTP Hosting service blog, we concentrate on the importance and implementation of User Isolation and Home Folders in Secure FTP Hosting environments.
Having multiple users accessing your FTP Hosting is a great way to share files and data with your clients, suppliers and colleagues, however all those users need to be isolated for data protection. For example, it is important that your suppliers cannot see your internal company data, or that your clients cannot see your supplier information – it could be seriously detrimental to your business.
It is also important to realise that while some solutions may allow you to isolate a user, they could still potentially be able to list or view other parts of the directory structure, and in some cases this could disclose your client or supplier list, for example. With our FTP hosting packages, we provide the ability to allocate a 'home folder' to a user or group. By allocating a home folder, you are specifying that the user's view of the FTP Hosting / Online Storage 'starts here' and in fact anything else on the system is irrelevant.
In technical terms, when you specify a home directory, this location in the FTP Hosting becomes the user's 'root' folder, anything thereafter is relative to this location and anything above this root is inaccessible and invisible.
User isolation is a simple way to provide your users with what appears to be their own 'file server'; because inside this folder is their own user area and they are not aware anything else on your FTP Hosting or Online Storage even exists. Of course, there may be an occasion where you need them to be able to access a 'common area' on your FTP Hosting, this can be achieved without revealing the rest of your directory structure by using the 'virtual paths' feature of the admin web panel, check out our recent blog post for details.
All of our FTP Hosting packages come with our easy to use web administration panel, check out our Packages and Pricing page for more details on our wide array of options to meet all space requirements.
If you have any questions about our FTP Hosting products or Online Storage Services for business, please do not hesitate to contact us, complete our online enquiry form or give us a call on 02476 382031.