---
title: Where to Place Security Configuration Settings 
---

<!--
Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file distributed with
this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
(the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at

     http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
limitations under the License.
-->
<a id="implementing_security__section_155ED414321E4D4ABBD7ED3508E7BD62"></a>

Any security-related (properties that begin with `security-*`) configuration properties that are normally configured in `gemfire.properties` can be moved to a separate `gfsecurity.properties` file. Placing these configuration settings in a separate file allows you to restrict access to security configuration data. This way, you can still allow read or write access for your `gemfire.properties` file.

Upon startup, <%=vars.product_name%> processes will look for the `gfsecurity.properties` file in the following locations in order:

-   current working directory
-   user's home directory
-   classpath

If any password-related security properties are listed in the file but have a blank value, the process will prompt the user to enter a password upon startup.