Chapter 11. Securing Your Computer

Most home users and power users don't worry much about security. In fact, they're used to sharing their computers and files with everyone in the family. With Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional, understanding how security works has a definite impact on how positive your experience with the operating system is, however.

As opposed to Microsoft Windows 98, each user logs on to the computer using their own account name and password. This process is called authentication. The operating system uses those credentials to determine what files they have permission to access and what rights they have while using the computer. This is authorization. The most notable example is that users can't access files in user profile ...

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