The difference between standard type and secure type

If you configure a folder to be Standard type, this means that it will be a general folder.

If you configure it to be Secure type, it means that it’s a safer folder and its internal files are specially processed and cannot be accessed directly through the URL. DNN controls access to files by a special interface. In this way, the administrator can control the permissions of the file.

We will clarify this below.
Please see screenshot below. We create one folder called “securefolder” and configure it to be “Secure” type.
Then right-click this folder and enter Permissions interface. On this page, we enable “Open Files In Folder” for All Users.

Then we enter “securefolder” and right-click one image file to get file url. Finally, we copied the URL of that image file. See below.

In browser, we pasted the url which we copied from last step. After that, the image could display correctly. See below.

Now, we disable “Open Files in Folder” and save, see below.

After that, we pasted the url which we copied in browser once again. At this moment, the image couldn’t display at all. System will ask you to login by an user which has permission. See screenshot below.

Let's assume that if the file we created is Standard type, what will the result be?
As a result, no matter whether you log in or have permission, as long as you have URL of that image, you can directly input image url into the browser and view the image.

That’s all! Thanks for your reading. Now, I think we’re clear about the difference between the two types.