IIS FTP User Isolation-Week 46

You can find this week’s video here.

I’ve been looking forward to releasing this week’s video.  IIS FTP User isolation is an interesting topic because it offers a lot of power and flexibility but it’s not very intuitive because of how it’s managed.

This week we walk through the five isolation modes to gain a full understanding of the IIS FTP method of configuration for user isolation.

IIS FTP is a powerful application, but some of the flexibility is hidden through a unique convention based method of management. It’s easy to miss the fact that IIS FTP allows the ability to have multiple users who can be directed to different folders and be fully isolated from each other. For example, you can have a designer1 who has access to the whole site while designer2 has access to just project1 only, while—if you set it up correctly—you can feel confident that designer2 can’t gain more access than they are allowed.

IIS FTP requires understanding a few core principles to manage it effectively and to ensure that you don’t overlook key security settings that would allow users to gain more access than they should. IIS FTP 7.5 offers five different isolation modes, each of which targets a different situation.

This is now week 46 of a 52 week series for the web pro, and the 3rd of a 5 week mini-series on IIS FTP. You can view past and future weeks here: http://dotnetslackers.com/projects/LearnIIS7/

Also, if you’re reading this early enough, I’m taking questions for the last couple weeks of the series.  Read more about it here.

You can find this week’s video here.

3 Comments

  • Great tutorial... worked well for me.. thanks..

  • I have created user isolation same as in ur tutorial. User1 and user2 are accessing the ftp using same computer , using internet explorer. When user1 login to his account and logs out.After tat user2 access ftp , this time internet explorer takes user2 directly to user1's folder. Internet explorer/FTP is not clearing the path/password. IS there any way to solve this?

  • Hi Sajin. Great, glad that you have the config setup well already.

    IE hangs on to the cached settings for dear life. You can prove that it's saved settings by testing with the InPrivate mode and it should ask for new credentials. To get around that you'll need to do all of the standard IE tricks like Ctrl-F5 or clear the settings. I don't know right off which particular settings are used for IE FTP since I haven't used IE FTP in a while.

    You may want to consider a different FTP client or ensure that your users use InPrivate mode for their FTP usage (the second is a hassle).

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