Posts Tagged ‘folder guard’

Using Folder Guard to protect from the “social engineering” attacks

Friday, July 29th, 2011

Buy Folder Guard:
Personal license $39.95
Business license $79.95

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The U.S. Department of Homeland Security ran a test recently to see how easy it could be to trick people into plugging random USB sticks into their computers and potentially infect them with malware. The test showed that the human factor is possibly the weakest link in the computer security: your network may have the best firewall, you can have the strongest policies prohibiting the users from downloading random files from the Internet, yet all that is useless when people have little hesitation in using the USB sticks they find on the company parking lot.

Microsoft has attempted to address such a problem somewhat by disabling the AutoRun feature for the USB sticks in Windows 7. Still, it leaves a rouge program on the USB stick just a few clicks away from running. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to stop running programs form the USB sticks completely?

It’s possible to achieve that with our software Folder Guard, by creating a file access filter that would restrict the use of the executable files off the the removable drives. Let us show how to do that in detail:

Run Folder Guard, and switch to the window that shows the existing filters, by choosing View – Filters from the menu. If you use Folder Guard version 8.3 or later, you should see a filter that we need already in the list, it’s called Lock external drives:

If you don’t see this filter in the list, it’s easy to create it: choose Filter – New from the menu, and then enter the properties of the filters as follows:

The most important part of this filter is the content of the Except for folders box: it contains the mask C:* . Why it is there? Because we don’t want the restrictions that this filter will create to apply to the files located on the main drive of your computer (which is most probably the drive C:). We only want the restrictions to apply to other drives, which would have drive letters other than C:. The star character (*) in the mask means any set of characters, so the mask C:* would match any folder located on the C: drive. As a result, the filter would not apply to any file or folder on the C: drive, just what we want.

Now, if there are other drives permanently attached to the computer and you want the users to be able to use such drives without restrictions, you should add the appropriate masks to the Except for folders box, too. (You can separate masks with comas, semicolons, or line breaks). For example, if your computer has a DVD drive that has the drive letter D: and you want the users to use the DVD drive without restrictions, modify the content of the Except for folders box to read as follows: (Press the [...] button to modify the content of the box.)

Did you know you could use our new software USBCrypt to password-protect the USB flash drives and other external drives? You can try it free for 30 days. Read more…

C:*;D:*

The rest of the filter properties can be left empty. An empty Apply to box means Apply to all and an empty Except for box means Except for none. We have entered a star character in the Apply to files box, to emphasize that it should apply to all files, but we could have left the box empty, it would produce the same result as the star character.

Now that we have created the filter that we need, it’s time to apply a restricting attribute to it. If you want to completely lock access to the removable drives, assign the No access attribute to the filter:

The result of the No access attribute would be that the users would be prevented from both opening the files from the external devices, and saving the files to them. This way, if someone attaches a USB stick to the computer protected with such a filter, he or she would not be able to use the stick at all.

Attention System Administrators: Folder Guard is enterprise-ready! The Folder Guard Administrator’s Kit is available now.

What if at some point you do need to access a removable drive? Just disable the protection of Folder Guard, perform the task, then re-enable the protection back (no Windows restart required).

More information

How to unhide a folder hidden with Folder Guard

Friday, May 13th, 2011

Buy Folder Guard:
Personal license $39.95
Business license $79.95

Try Folder Guard free:
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If you've used Folder Guard to lock a folder with a password, it's obvious how to unprotect such a folder: just double-click on the folder's icon, enter your password, and the folder would be unlocked. However, what if you have set up the folder to be hidden altogether? In such a case, when you browse your computer, you would not see the folder in the Explorer windows, and there would be no icon to double-click on! So, how to unlock the folder if it's invisible?

One solution that's available right out of the box is the Toggle Protection command that's added to the Windows Start - All Programs - Folder Guard menu when you install Folder Guard. When you use this command and enter the Master password, it turns off the protection of all folders that's you've protected with Folder Guard. In particular, it unhides any hidden folders, as well. You can also set up a hot key or enable the Folder Guard taskbar icon to give yourself a quick access to this command. However, what if you don't want to turn off the protection completely, and only want to unhide just one particular folder, while keeping the other folders protected? Well, it's quite easy to achieve such an effect with Folder Guard, too.

The solution is simple: all you need to do is create a shortcut to the file FGKey.exe that would run this program with the command line switch /UNLOCK with the path to the hidden folder. When FGKey.exe is started this way, it prompts for the unlocking password that you've set up for that specific folder (which may be different from the Master password), and, if the password is correct, it unlocks (and unhides) the folder.

Let's show an example. Suppose you've created a folder named Hidden Folder in the root folder on the C: drive. In such a case, the path to the folder is "C:\Hidden Folder" (including the double-quotes, because the path contains spaces). Now, if you have not done so already, run Folder Guard, locate this folder in its window, and use the Lock with password command to, well, lock it with a password. Don't forget to assign the hidden attribute to the folder, too, to make it hidden. Enable the protection and verify it's working: the folder should disappear from the Windows Explorer view.

Now, let's create a shortcut to unhide the hidden folder. Right-click on an empty space of your Desktop, choose New - Shortcut from the menu, and enter the following command as the target for the shortcut:

If you use Windows 32-bit:

"C:\Program Files\Folder Guard\FGKey.exe" /UNLOCK:"C:\Hidden Folder"

If you use Windows 64-bit:

"C:\Program Files\Folder Guard\FGKey64.exe" /UNLOCK:"C:\Hidden Folder"

Here is how the Create Shortcut screen should look in the 32-bit case:

Finish creating the shortcut, (you can choose a suitable name for it, such as Unhide my folder, or similar). Now try it: double-click on the shortcut, and you should see a prompt to enter the password:

Enter the password for the folder (remember, it may not be the same as the Master Password) , and you should see the Hidden Folder to appear back in Windows Explorer! Now you can open the hidden folder and use the files it contains, as usual.

How to hide the hidden folder back? The easiest way is to use the Toggle Protection command we've discussed above, and choose the Lock all folders option:

However, if you have other unlocked folders, this command would lock them, as well. If that's not what you want, you could create another shortcut to run FGKey.exe, but this time with the /LOCK option in its command line. Such a command would lock only one specific folder that you provide for this option, without affecting other protected folders. See the Folder Guard User's Guide for the details about this and other options that you can use with FGKey.exe.

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Folder Guard 8.4 released

Friday, March 25th, 2011

Buy Folder Guard:
Personal license $39.95
Business license $79.95

Try Folder Guard free:
Download free trial

We’ve just released an updated version 8.4 of our password-protection software Folder Guard that corrects several minor issues:

A problem has been corrected that caused the hidden folder attribute not to be applied properly in some situations.
A problem has been corrected that caused the desktop icons to become hidden after disabling the protection in some situations.
A problem has been corrected that in some situations caused the Toggle Protection command not to accept the password even if the correct password was entered.
Several other minor improvements and corrections have been made.

If you did not experience these problems, you may want to skip this update. Or, please feel free to download it from our web site and give it a try. As before, if you have purchased your Folder Guard license within the previous 12 months, you can upgrade to Folder Guard 8.4 free of charge. Otherwise, please use the upgrade web page to order the new license and receive the automatic 50% discount.

How to restrict Internet Explorer from downloading programs from the Internet

Tuesday, December 28th, 2010

Buy Folder Guard:
Personal license $39.95
Business license $79.95

Try Folder Guard free:
Download free trial

It’s possible to set up Folder Guard to stop downloads of programs with any web browser, including Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari, and so on, as described in this article.

However, what if you only need to restrict downloads with Internet Explorer? Here is a trick you could use to make Folder Guard restrict users of Internet Explorer from downloading programs and other potentially unsafe contents from the Internet.

To set up such a restriction, use Folder guard to revoke the Allow to download files with Internet Explorer permission:

Revoke the Allow to download files permission from the selected users to restrict downloads

(Keep in mind that after you change this settings, you need to log off and then log back on before it takes effect.)

When this permission is revoked, then an attempt to download a program from the Internet will result in the following message shown to the user:

Internet Explorer prevented the user from downloading a program

Remember that Folder Guard lets you set up different permissions for different users. This way, you can restrict downloads for the selected user accounts of your computer, while allowing such downloads for your own account.

Attention System Administrators: Folder Guard is enterprise-ready! The Folder Guard Administrator’s Kit is available now.

What if your users have access to other web browsers, such as Firefox, Chrome, Opera, or Safari? It’s possible to set up Folder Guard to prevent downloads of programs with any web browser, too.

Please feel free to download the fully functional evaluation version and give it a try. If you don’t like it, use Windows Control Panel to uninstall it: no strings attached.

More information

Use Folder Guard to restrict access to Control Panel

Sunday, December 5th, 2010

Buy Folder Guard:
Personal license $39.95
Business license $79.95

Try Folder Guard free:
Download free trial

You can use Folder Guard to not only protect access to files and folders, but also to the command of Windows Control Panel.

It may be not obvious, but the commands that appear in Windows Control Panel are handled by the special system files of the type "Control Panel extension" (their names have the extension .CPL) located in the C:\Windows\System32 folder. For example, the DESK.CPL file is responsible for the Display command of Control Panel, TIMEDATE.CPL – for the Date and Time command, and so on. (Some of the .CPL files are responsible for more than one command of Control Panel).

This information gives us a method of restricting access to the commands of Control Panel with Folder Guard: we simply need to restrict access to the appropriate .CPL file with Folder Guard, that would make Windows unable to use that file, and it would effectively prevent access to the appropriate command of Control Panel.

Here is the list of the common .CPL files and the Control Panel commands each of the files is responsible for:

.CPL file	Control Panel command(s)
ACCESS.CPL	Accessibility Options
APPWIZ.CPL	Add/Remove Programs
DESK.CPL	Display
FIREWALL.CPL	Windows firewall
HDWWIZ.CPL	Add/Remove Hardware
INETCPL.CPL	Internet settings, user accounts on Windows 95,98,Me
INFRARED.CPL	Infrared
INTL.CPL	Regional settings
JOY.CPL	Game Controllers
MAIN.CPL	Fonts, Keyboard, Mouse, PC Card (PCMCIA), Printers
MMSYS.CPL	Sounds
MODEM.CPL	Modems
NCPA.CLP	Network connections
NETCPL.CPL	Network settings
NUSRMGR.CPL	User manager on Windows XP
ODBCCP32.CPL	ODBC Data Source Administrator
PASSWORD.CPL	Passwords
POWERCFG.CPL	Power Management
SYSDM.CPL	System
TELEPHON.CPL	Telephony
THEMES.CPL	Desktop Themes
TIMEDATE.CPL	Date/Time

(You may have other CPL files, or not all of the files listed above, depending on your version of Windows and other software installed on your computer).

How to use this list? Very simple:

Find the command of Control Panel in the table that you want to restrict with Folder Guard;
Determine the name of the .CPL file that is responsible for that command;
Run Folder Guard and use its Protect – Add file command to add the desired .CPL file(s) to the main window of Folder Guard. (The .CPL files are usually located in the folder C:\Windows\System32). For example, if you want to restrict access to the Programs and Features command of Control Panel, look for the file appwiz.cpl.
Now assign the No access attribute to the .CPL file you want to protect:

Assign the No Access attribute to a CPL file to restrict that Control Panel command

Finally, enable the protection, as usual, and observe the effect: the command that you have restricted may still be visible in Control Panel, but when you attempt to use it, nothing should happen, the command should not work.

Please feel free to download the fully functional evaluation version and give it a try. If you don’t like it, use Windows Control Panel to uninstall it: no strings attached.

More information

Compare MySecretFolder and Folder Guard

Wednesday, December 1st, 2010

MySecretFolder has a simple and straightforward user interface, which you may find much easier to use than that of Folder Guard. On the other hand, Folder Guard offers more protection options, giving you more flexibility in protecting your computer resources.
MySecretFolder can protect only one folder at any given time, while Folder Guard lets you protect any number of files and folders at the same time.
MySecretFolder simply hides the secret folder, or assigns a password to it, while Folder Guard lets you fine-tune the access rights to the folder (for example, make it read-only or prevent all access to it, make the folder itself hidden or only its contents, etc.)
MySecretFolder protects the folder in the same way for all users of your computer, while Folder Guard lets you set up the protection so that any particular folder may be protected from some users and accessible to others.
There are many other important features offered by Folder Guard but not supported by MySecretFolder, such as user permissions, trusted modules, file filters, and more.

More information about Folder Guard…

More information about MySecretFolder…

Please feel free to download the fully functional evaluation version and give it a try. If you don’t like it, use Windows Control Panel to uninstall it, no strings attached.

What’s included with every license:

30-day Money-Back Guarantee on every software license for up to 5 users or computers. Details…
One Full Year of FREE Upgrades to both minor and major new releases of the same product.
FREE online technical and customer support.
FREE download of the software and FREE delivery of the license key by email.
FREE install on another computer of yours! For example, you can install the software on both your desktop and laptop, without paying anything for the second license. (Business customers get two additional computers included in the license, free of charge.)
Optional CD-ROM is also available.

Hide folders with Folder Guard

Sunday, November 28th, 2010

Folder Guard makes it very easy to hide a folder: all you need to do is select the folder you want to hide in the Folder Guard window and assign the Hidden attribute to it (by pressing the Hidden button on the toolbar or by using the Protect – Visibility – Hidden command from the menu):

Hiding a folder with Folder Guard is easy

Now enable the protection as usual (by pressing the Toggle Protection button on the toolbar or by using the Enable Protection command on the Tools menu), and try to locate the folder with Windows Explorer. That is, click on the Windows Start button, then on Computer (or My Computer) on the Start menu, and try navigate to the folder you’ve just hidden: it should not be visible! However, when you disable the protection (by, for example, clicking on the Toggle Protection button again), the folder should become instantly visible. (You may need to press the F5 key within the Windows Explorer window, to make it refresh the list of folders it shows).

Note that you do not need run the main program of Folder Guard to enable or disable the protection: you have several other tools available:

You can use the Toggle protection link on the Windows Start – Program – Folder Guard menu.
You may want to set up a hot key to give yourself quick access to the Toggle Protection command by pressing a key combination of your choice.
You can also enable the option to display a Folder Guard icon on Windows taskbar next to the clock, and click on that icon to get access to the Toggle Protection command:

And more! Please feel free to download the fully functional evaluation version and give it a try. If you don’t like it, use Windows Control Panel to uninstall it: no strings attached.

More information

Lock folders and drives with passwords

Wednesday, November 24th, 2010

Password-Protect Folders

If you want to protect folders with passwords without encrypting the files, then Folder Guard is the tool you need. The password protection is instantaneous, no matter how many files the folder contains or how large the files are. However, the password protection takes effect only on your computer, where Folder Guard is running: if you move the folder to another computer, it will not be protected, unless that computer has Folder Guard installed and configured, as well. Read more about Folder Guard…

Encrypt external USB drives

If you have an external drive that you want to protect with a password, then USBCrypt is the software you need. This software creates an encrypted area on the external drive that you can use to keep your sensitive files. You can use the encrypted drive with other computers, that don’t have USBCrypt software installed. If you lose the encrypted drive, your files will be safely protected with the password you’ve chosen. Read more about USBCrypt…

How to password-protect a folder with Folder Guard

This software is compatible with Windows 8

You can use Folder Guard software to protect folders with passwords.

To lock a folder with a password: run Folder Guard and drag and drop the folder you want to protect to its window, or choose the Wizard command:

(click to enlarge)

Choose a password and press OK. Note that a little yellow key sign has appeared next to the folder’s icon; this is the indication that this folder has an individual password assigned to it.

Did you know you could use our new software USBCrypt to password-protect the USB flash drives and other external drives? You can try it free for 30 days. Read more…

Now resume the protection (or apply the changes) and try to open the folder you have just protected through a Windows Explorer window. That is, click on the Windows Start button, then click on Computer (or My Computer) on the Start menu, and navigate to the folder you have locked. Finally, double-click on the protected folder in the right-hand window of Windows Explorer, and a password prompt should appear on the screen:

(click to enlarge)

If you have entered the correct password, the folder should become unprotected and you should be able to work with the files and subfolders it contains without restrictions, as usual. However, if you don’t enter the correct password, the folder will remain protected.

(Note that in order to unlock the folder this way, you need to double-click on the folder in the right-hand panel of the Windows Explorer window. If you select the folder in the left-hand panel that shows the folder tree, the password prompt will not be shown and the Access denied message will be shown instead.)

Now, after you have unlocked the folder, try to close the Windows Explorer window, and you should see a prompt to lock the folder back:

(click to enlarge)

Reply Yes, and the folder will be locked back with the password again, and will remain inaccessible until you enter the correct password again.

This software is compatible with Windows 7

In addition to the basic password-protection described above, Folder Guard lets you customize the way it works to suit your specific requirements:

You can direct Folder Guard to add the Lock and Unlock commands to the Windows shortcut menu. You can use them to lock and unlock the password-protected folders by right-clicking on them, instead of (or in addition to) double-clicking on the folders as described above
If you have locked many folders with passwords, you can make them all accessible at once by running Folder Guard and pausing the protection (you will need to enter your Master password, or course!) When you are don working with the protected folders, run Folder Guard and choose to resume the protection, to lock all folders at once with one click.
Instead of locking files and folders with passwords, your can completely hide them!

And more! Please feel free to download the fully functional evaluation version and give it a try. If you don’t like it, use Windows Control Panel to uninstall it: no strings attached.

More information

Folder Guard 8.3.2 (minor update)

Thursday, November 4th, 2010

We’ve just released a minor update 8.3.2 to Folder Guard. This update corrects an error introduced in version 8.3.1 that prevented some license keys from being accepted as valid. If you’ve installed version 8.3.1 and the software asked you to enter a valid license key (even though you’ve already entered it), please download and install version 8.3.2 to correct this error.

Locking access to the external drives with Folder Guard

Tuesday, November 2nd, 2010

Buy Folder Guard:
Personal license $39.95
Business license $79.95

Try Folder Guard free:
Download free trial

Previously we’ve shown how easy it was to set up Folder Guard to prevent downloads of programs from the Internet. As a side effect, the filter that accomplished that task prevented running programs from the removable drives, as well. However, what if you want to stop users of your computer from using the external drives at all? For example, what if you don’t want them to copy documents and files from the computer to the removable drives they could bring with them? With Folder Guard, it’s easy to achieve that.

As before, let’s start by creating a file access filter that would restrict the use of the removable drives. Run Folder Guard, and choose View – Filters from the menu to switch to the window that shows the existing filters. If you use Folder Guard version 8.3 or later, you should see a filter that we need already in the list, it’s called Lock external drives:

Folder Guard filters

If you don’t see this filter in the list, it’s easy to create it: choose Filter – New from the menu, and then enter the properties of the filters as follows:

The Lock external drives filter of Folder Guard

The most important part of this filter is the content of the Except for folders box: it contains the mask C:* . Why it is there? Because we don’t want the restrictions that this filter would create to apply to the files located on the main drive of your computer (which is most probably the drive C:). We only want the restrictions to apply to other drives, which would have drive letters other than C:. The star character (*) in the mask means any set of characters, so the mask C:* would match any folder located on the C: drive. As a result, the filter would not apply to any file or folder on the C: drive, just what we want.

Did you know you could use our new software USBCrypt to password-protect the USB flash drives and other external drives? You can try it free for 30 days. Read more…

Now, if your computer has other drives permanently attached and you want the users to be able to use such drives without restrictions, you should add the appropriate masks to the Except for folders box, too. (You can separate masks with comas, semicolons, or line breaks). For example, if your computer has a DVD drive that has the drive letter D: and you want the users to use the DVD drive without restrictions, modify the content of the Except for folders box to read as follows: (Press the [...] button to modify the content of the box.)

C:*;D:*

Now that we have created the filter that we need, it’s time to apply a restricting attribute to it. We basically have two choices: the No access attribute and the Read-only attribute. Which one to assign to the filter depends on how exactly you want the external devices to be restricted. If you want to completely lock access to the removable drives, assign the No access attribute to the filter:

The No access attribute will prevent all access to the external drives

The result of the No access attribute would be that the users would be prevented from both opening the files from the external devices, and saving the files to them. If only you want to stop users from saving files to the removable drives, but allow them to open or copy files from them, than the Read-only attribute would do the job:

The Read-only attribute will prevent saving or copying files onto the removable devices

Attention System Administrators: Folder Guard is enterprise-ready! The Folder Guard Administrator’s Kit is available now.

What if at some point you do need to access a removable drive? Just disable the protection of Folder Guard, perform the task, then re-enable the protection back (no Windows restart required).