Need a solution to a unique access control scenario

[urban]

Hi all,

our office keeps all past projects and reports (mostly MS Office Suite documents) on an external HDD in the Manager's office. Access to past projects would require the Manager's permission because we don't want people having access to the hard drive and thus the ability to copy the entire hard drive.

This is good security measures but it makes access to past documents a pain in the butt.

Is there a solution (software or hardware) such that we can put all past projects on the server, but only allowing people to read them and denying any copy/clone/save as/screen capture attempts? We simply don't want people to keep copies of the files.

Any suggestion is greatly appreciated!

[bokep]

Going as far as disallowing Print Screen is a little ridiculous. If someone really wanted to copy those files they could use their camera, write it down on a piece of paper, etc. Just give read-only access to people who need it the most.

[deep]

I agree - there is a limit to how you can protect your data and still make it usable. If you have people that MUST have access, then you are allowing them to "know" the data, whether that means copy and paste it, take a photo, or memorize it.

If it is so critical that you can't allow that, then you need to prevent them from using it entirely.

If the issue is that you just don't want people to take the ENTIRE drive worth of data and flee the scene, then you need to log access to files on the drive. You would then be able to see how often and how many of the old files are being accessed by users. If you suddenly see the entire drive being ripped by someone, you'd obviously need to act quickly.

There are quite a few cheap programs that will do this for you and even send alarms automatically. Something like this: http://sharealarm.nsauditor.com/ would do the trick, although I'm not endorsing that product specifically nor do I have any good recommendations. Maybe someone else here does, though...

[urban]

Thank you two for the valuable input!

The software suggested seems interesting. I will forward it to the IT person.

Thanks!

[Evil Baby]

Isn't this one of the reason PDF file format was created? Unfortunately read-only access wont be able to stop people from hitting ctrl+a->ctrl+c->ctrl+v

There isn't anything that I know of that can stop print screens from being made. I suppose depending on what OS each computer was running the admin could disable that client side, but not server side.

Also depending on the software you have installed on your network you should be able to limit access to the drive to a certain group, then just put the pdf files in there, password protected and disable copying on the pdf's.