File Protection

File protection prevents the accidental or intentional deletion and modification of information in a file.

File protection is often performed by preventing writing to the media containing these files or by applying protection mechanisms to the files themselves.

There are several ways to prevent writing to media or files:

Physical file protection: This can be done on the storage medium by invoking the protection mechanism on the device, which can be a switch, lever, or notch. This will prevent writing despite the requests of the software. Even USB and removable disk drives can have these protection mechanisms.

Operating system protection: Files can be designated as "read-only" by invoking logical file protection. Both read/write and read-only files can be stored on the same disk volume.

Computer commands and privileges: The owner of a file can set the file permission levels to give some people read-only access while others have read/write access.

Files can also be protected in a variety of other means such as encryption, masking, obfuscation, tokenization, and a range of other methods. Integrity of files can be protected by using integrity checks, version controls, and logging of all changes to the file.

File protection also requires policies with consequences and enforcement to prevent unauthorized access or modification. Files should also be protected by implementing techniques such as deleted file recovery and backups (both online and offline). Often, the only way to recover damaged files is from a backup that has been insulated from the damage that may have occurred to the file in production.