1387 The main functionality of FileDefense comes from changing the way your OS operates by adding a layer of security at the file access layer. The amount of damage any application can do to you is based on whether it can access your personal files. The more you can limit this, the less damage even the most malicious program can do. We feel strongly about data protection. And the strategy for protecting your data is not to attempt to protect networks or your fellow Mac users, but to focus on protecting your personal files, and doing that well.

When you run an application without FileDefense installed in the operating system, the application essentially has free reign over your personal documents. It is free to read them, write to them, or delete them. There are no restrictions for what an application to do to any or all of your files. For example, if a sinister programmer so chose, he or she would be able to write a program that corrupts all of your personal files in seconds so that they are beyond repair. Or perhaps a program may chose to silently relay your personal data to a network destination of its choice without you ever knowing. This is why viruses and trojan horses can be so devastating when they get loose - there are few safety nets in place for when an application is run. Traditionally, opening an application is like letting it loose on your system

When you have FileDefense installed, every single file an application opens is questioned and brought to your attention, thereby limiting the damage it can do if it is malicious.

If you do not yet trust an application, every file the application is trying to access (along with what it is trying to do to that file) is presented to you in a dialog, giving you the control to decide whether you want to allow the application to be able to access the document in question. You can even run a destructive virus with confidence that the damage it can do is limited. As soon as it starts accessing your files you will be alerted about it, and you will be able to force quit it and remove it from your system, all by simply choosing from 3 buttons on a dialog box.

Although simple in presentation, the three buttons allow you to fully control what an application can do on your system by setting rules for which files it can access. Using the three buttons you can effectively sandbox an application, so you know that no matter what it will only be able to access the documents you have expressly granted it access to. As you can see the three buttons are as follows: Kill, Allow This, and Allow All. The descriptions of each are as follows:

Allow All:
When you are using an application that you fully trust you can choose Allow All to give the application free reign on your system without having any more of these dialogs appear for it. It will effectively disable FileDefense for this application. This is desirable because the majority of the applications most people use tend to be from completely trusted sources. As such FileDefense comes with a list of preset trusted applications (which you are free to edit on installation) so that you do not have to go through the initial setup procedure of granting pre-installed applications from trusted sources access to files yourself. An example of such an application is Safari.app.

Allow This:
Using this button you can watch and restrict each file that the application tries to access. If you continually click this button then for every new file that the application in question tries to access, another dialog similar to this one will appear. This way you can monitor every file that the application is trying to access, and from this you can judge whether you can trust it. For example if you were using an peer-to-peer application and it was trying to open open some files that you are downloading, this would be acceptable behavior and you would click Allow This because it is not doing anything wrong for now. However if started opening your private files in your documents folder then you may want to select the Kill option and contact the author of the program for an explanation on why it is behaving like that.

Kill:
This will force quit the application and disallow it to access this or any other file until next time you run it. This option is present for cases where you see that the application appears suspicious (eg, it is trying to read a file it should not need access to), and you decide not to trust it for now.

FileDefense used in 3 basic scenarios:

Scenario 1:
In this scenario you have just installed an application from a source you trust thoroughly, perhaps you have been using their software for years and it is a well reputed company. In this case you would normally click Allow All so that unnecessary dialogs do not appear asking you whether you want to allow the application to open specific files. FileDefense protection will be disabled for this application because you trust it.

Scenario 2:
In this scenario you start running some software from a source that you do not yet trust or distrust. Perhaps it is some peer to peer filesharing software. In this case you would click Allow This repeatedly for each file it attempts to access so long as you are happy to trust it with whichever files it is accessing at the time. You would continue doing this, and so long as the application does not try to access anything that you do not want it to access you could allow it to run normally, with it being able to open only the files which you have previously clicked Allow This for. If at any time it tries to access a new file that you have not granted it access to (even days later), a new dialog will appear asking you for your choice before it will be allowed to access that document. This effectively allows you to sandbox an application so you know at all times exactly what it is capable of doing based on the parameters you have set.

Scenario 3:
This scenario starts of the same as scenario 2. You run some software that you do not yet trust or distrust. However in this case, after clicking Allow This several times, it starts to open some files that you do not think it should need access to, and you question why it would want to be accessing those files. Perhaps a peer-to-peer application starts to read your private documents that should be completely unassociated with it. In this case it is accessing your personal files and you start to feel suspicious, you choose the Kill option to force quit the application, and then either do not run it again or perhaps contact the author for an explanation behind the application's behavior. If the program did turn out to be malicious then you can be sure that any data that it did read or write is completely limited to the files that you granted it access to. And since you did not allow it to access any of the files that are precious to you, you can rest assured that the data contained in those files is still private and safe.

System Requirements:

FileDefense is programmed to run on the following minimum specification:
Apple Macintosh G4 800MHZ or faster
Mac OS X (version 10.4 or newer, Leopard Compatible)

US$59.95

You can download a 30 minute trial of the application by clicking on the enormous button above this text.

For more information, visit:
http://www.subrosasoft.com/OSXSoftware/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=204

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