Restrict access to network location from Windows Explorer

Question

We have a legacy application which has data and PDF files available on a network share, and a locally-installed EXE to run it. The EXE uses a UNC path to access the data and PDFs.

The customer is concerned that users can access the data and PDFs outside the application.

Question: Is it possible, via Group Policy, third-party applications or whatever, to restrict Windows Explorer, CMD.EXE and so on from accessing this shared location while still allowing the application to access it?

Answer 1

Short answer is no, but you can restrict access beyond the authentication/authorization methods avaiable within whatever network file system protocol you are using (probably SMB since you've mentioned .EXE files and windows-explorer).

See discussion on Building a Student Storage server