How to set a password for a folder

Ensuring the safety of data today comes in first place among the tasks facing each user of a personal computer. Indeed, very often we have to protect our own developments, important information, confidential information from the eyes of outsiders. Conducting an analogy with the dwelling of a man who protects his inhabitants against encroachments by strangers, and also protects property from theft, the data stored in the computer can be represented in the form of a certain bunker (folder) and the property (files) stored by it. In each house there is a door and to provide protection from strangers - a lock opened with a cleverly made key. In a personal computer, such a lock is access to the folder by a password, and the key is the password, respectively.

The need to set a password for the folder can occur at any time, so the question of how to set the password for the folder puzzles many. For example, with the arrival of a new employee to work in an office where several people work, the task may be to hide information from a young employee that he or she does not need to know early or at all. Or, for example, few will be pleased when their photos from the last "corporate" in a not too public appearance will become the property of the whole department .... In the home environment, there is often enough a need to prohibit access to certain information, for example, children ... Of course, from a professional point of view, there may be a need to protect data from competitors, intruders, etc. - password protection and encryption - provide for this all the possibilities. How to set a password for a folder?

The options for answering the question of how to set a password for a folder are actually a few. Here are some ways to protect information from outsiders:

- compression of folders and files in the archive, setting password protection;

- hiding data and putting it in a secret folder, to which access to other users is restricted by setting a password;

- the creation of a virtual encrypted disk, which will record all classified materials.

In fact, there are more ways to protect, and the choice of the most preferable one depends on the specific situation. We will focus on the simplest of them and describe how to set a password for a folder, and also how to set a password on a network folder.

It should be noted that the standard tools of Windows in the aspect of protecting information contained in folders using a password are rather limited. The only thing that can be done is to limit the access of certain users to certain folders. All settings in this case are selected in the "Properties: folder_name" window, called by the context menu, which opens after right-clicking on the folder and selecting "Properties". In this window, select the "Security" tab and set user accounts that will have free access to the folder, as well as those to whom the access will be closed with a password.

Similarly a password is set on the network folder. The only difference is that you must first allow access to the folder over the network. This is done on the "Access" tab of the Properties: folder_name window.

The above does not guarantee 100% protection of data, but from not very experienced curious users puts a certain barrier. To provide protection of a higher level, you will have to use third-party utilities that are distributed on the network and available for download. Most of these programs are easy to use and can be used without much knowledge. To protect information that is not used very often, the best option is to archive with the password set to the archive.