Access Based Enumeration

Access-based enumeration (ABE) displays only the files and folders from a Windows file share which a user has permissions to access. If a user does not have Read (or equivalent) NTFS permissions for a folder, Windows hides the folder from the user’s view. This feature is active only when viewing files and folders in a shared folder; it is not active when viewing files and folders in the local file system. By utilizing this feature and setting the proper permissions, network administrators can reduce the numbers of shares needed and use ABE to only display files and folders the user have permissions to.

MyWorkDrive fully supports ABE when using Active Directory Mode with SMB Access to file storage in the user context. It is important to note that the UNC path must be specified for the file share when using ABE: e.g. \\server\share. If UNC path is not used ABE is not applied. In addition it’s important to specify NTFS permissions on the file folder using Active Directory groups – do not rely on local “Administrators” or “Users” groups.

More details on how ABE works are located in our Windows file sharing article.

ABE shares, when configured using the SMB Service Account with Entra ID mode will display the shares available to the service account. There is no signed-in user user context.