Stephen Sylvester
File Management
POS:335
John Demory
May 26th 2014

In this paper on file access I will be covering two different ways that a system that can support 5,000 users, specifically a protection scheme in UNIX. Please note that out of these 5,000 users, only 4,990 of those users will have access to a specific file. I will first begin with the explanation of one of the ways that a system can support 5,000 users and then move on to the second way that a system can support 5,000 users.
The first way that a system can support 5,000 users is for the administrator or facilitator to set up an access control list of all 4,990 users that he or she wants to have access to the specific file. A great real world example of controlled access would be at my current place of employment at the Department of Veteran’s Affairs. Every employee within the company is assigned user roles. These user roles reflect their job position within the company. Every employee has access to our shared drive folder on our network based on the employee’s credentials and need to know privileges (based on their specific duties and user role). Based on their credentials it will grant that employee access to specific folders.
I personally deal with medical records and often, at times the doctors use our network shared drive to upload patient information to be indexed into our system. The doctors must be on the access control list in order to access our shared network drive. Being that I work in the Medical Records Department as a medical records technician and have to pull records from our network shared drive. Only four people within our department including myself have access to these files on a daily basis. This is due to security and confidentiality of all the patients. All the files within the network shared drive deal with protected health information for many veterans of the Armed Forces. It is essential to have their personal information protected at all times. Users (full time employees or contract companies whose user roles directly relate to the job functions within the organization) can request for access to our network shared drive with supervisor approval if needed. If their request is authorized, that user can then call the help desk and submit a trouble ticket to request access to that specific folder. Their access is valid until the contract is complete and can request for renewal if the contract is extended.
The second way that a system can support 5,000 users would be for the administrator or facilitator to create an access control list. This access control list would have the list of names of the 4,990 users that will have access to a specific file. You would then put these 4,990 users into one specific group and set up the group access. The group access would have specific parameters dependent on the individual needs of the specific file. Unfortunately, this scheme cannot always be implemented due to user groups being restricted by the system.
In conclusion, in this paper on file access I have covered two different ways that a system can support 5,000 users, specifically a protection scheme in UNIX. The first method that I had covered was to set up an access control list with access to a specific file. The second method that I had covered was to set up an access control list with access to a specific group. I have also provided a real world example for you to visualize and possibly apply to your own life and experiences. I hope that this paper gave you more of an insight on how a system can support 5,000 users using a protection scheme in UNIX.

Citation:
Operating systems Internals and Design Principles (). (2012). Operating Systems. : William Stallings.