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Secure Shares

Instead of just communicating the most secure sharing procedure to your users, administrators can configure special settings to ensure a more secure environment when users are sharing files.

Administrators can require users to create all public shares with a password for an extra layer of security.

  • Users will not be able to disable the use of passwords.
  • This provides an extra layer of security for public shares.

To require a password for shares:

  1. Open a browser and log in to the Admin Portal.
  2. From the left navigation pane, under Settings, select Settings.
  3. Select the Misc. tab, and then the Share sub-tab.
  4. Next to Public Shares Must Be Password Protected, select the checkbox.
  5. Click Save.

For security reasons, you may want shares to have a randomly-generated name that is created by default.

  • Randomly-generated names are more difficult for attackers to guess 
  • Randomly-generated names do not expose user names or a description of the data which are commonly used in share names 

This is how the randomly-generated name looks in the User Portal when creating a share:

As an administrator, you can prevent users from changing the auto-generated share names for security purposes. 

To prevent name changes for shares:

  1. Open a browser and log in to the Admin Portal.
  2. From the left navigation pane, under Settings, select Settings.
  3. Select the Misc. tab, and then the Share sub-tab.
  4. Next to Disallow Share Name Change, select the checkbox.
  5. Click Save.

To protect Share links, you can hide the option in the User Portal to send the share link in email. 

This is where the user has the option to share a link to the file or folder in email on the User Portal:

As an administrator, you can disable the display of the email button to discourage users from sending the share link in email for security purposes.

To hide the option for sending a link to the share in email:

  1. Open a browser and log in to the Admin Portal.
  2. From the left navigation pane, under Settings, select Settings.
  3. Select the Misc. tab, and then the Share sub-tab.
  4. Next to Hide Send Share Link Via Email, select the checkbox.
  5. Click Save.

The ability to limit searches of user accounts by account type to ALL, FULL, GUEST, or EXTERNAL is available in FileCloud Server version 19.1 and later.

 

As an administrator, you can configure FileCloud to limit how users can search for other user accounts. 

By default, when user1 shares a file or folder with user2, then user1 can search for user2's account by the user name or email-id.

  • The search results list both exact and partial matches. 

However, this is not desirable in certain cases and organizations, as the search results reveal user accounts that exist in the FileCloud system. 

Therefore, FileCloud Server allows you to restrict user searches using two search modes:

User AccountUser Account Type
  • Exact Email Search With Explicit Account Invite
  • Exact Email Search With Implicit Account Invite
  • Exact Name/Email Search
  • Partial Name/Email Search
  • ALL
  • FULL
  • GUEST
  • EXTERNAL

How to Enable User Account Search Mode

How to Enable User Account-Type Search Mode

NOTE: You can use both of these search limitations together to create a combination that meets your requirements.

For example, you can set the User Account Search Mode to Partial Name/Email Search, and then use the User Account Type search mode to limit the results to only accounts with FULL access.


Note

Using a search mode limits account searches for all the users in the FileCloud system.

These settings are seen by a user when they want to share a file or folder with another specific user and need to find that user's email address.



The ability to change how a name is displayed in Sharing details is available in FileCloud Server version 19.1 and later.

To make it clearer which user has shared a file, you can change how a user name is displayed in Sharing details.

How User Names are Defined in FileCloud


In the Admin Portal, when you create a user, you can set 2 different names.

1. User Name

  • In the User Portal, by default, FileCloud displays the User Name.
  • It may not be clear to users who is sharing the file with them,
    especially if User Name includes only abbreviations and numbers.
  • The User Name cannot be changed after the user has been created.

2. Display Name

  • You can have FileCloud use the Display Name as well as the User Name
    on the Details tab when showing the share information.
  • Using the Display Name makes it clearer to users who is sharing the file with them.
  • The Display Name can be changed after the user has been created.

Where Your Changes Appear

In the User Portal, the user's name is displayed differently after you change the default display to include the Display Name.


 BEFORE (User Name)AFTER (Display Name and User Name)
Details Pane

Shared With Me list

How to Change the Display of a User's Name in Sharing Details

Changing the display in sharing details requires you to edit the cloudconfig file and restart the server.

To change the default from User Name to Display Name in sharing details:

  1. On the FileCloud Server, open the following file for editing:

    For Windows 

    XAMPP DIRECTORY/htdocs/config/cloudconfig.php

    For Linux 

    /var/www/config/cloudconfig.php

  2. Add the following code to use the Display Name:

    define("TONIDOCLOUD_USE_DISPLAYNAME_FOR_SHARED", 1);
  3. Save and close the file.
  4. Restart the Apache server.