Files in Public folders openly available on network

I have a security concern and hope someone can help me. In an office there are two Macs. Each Mac has Parallels Desktop (one has version 9 and the other has 10) and each has a Windows 7 Home Premium virtual machine. The two virtual machines need to be able to connect to each other through the office network. The VM's couldn't connect to each other while using the default network settings. I changed the VM's network settings from the default of Shared to Bridged and selected the Default adapter. Then the VM's connected to each other but I noticed the way Parallels integrates the Windows 7 files in to Mac OS X. All files saved while using a Windows 7 user account are redirected to subfolders of the special Public user account.

[1st attempt]
I don't want those files freely available through the network so I tried changing the sharing options for the Home/Work network categories in Windows 7. I couldn't find a combination of settings that would allow the two virtual machines to connect to each other to share files and not share those files freely through the network. Looked like there was a setting to require a user name and password to access files in subfolders under Public but if I enabled that and tried to access the files then access was denied without a log-in prompt. I moved the files out of the subfolder in Public, made a shared folder in C:\ and moved those files to the shared folder. Then I could share the files between the Windows 7 virtual machines.

[2nd attempt]
There were problems with using a shared folder that wasn't under Public. I moved the files to an unusual place and the programs that open the files were still trying to use the default folder under Public for opening and saving files and the files in the unusual place weren't available in OS X. Saving and opening files in an unusual folder didn't work well for the users of the computers. Plus, I'm not sure the users would do well with typing in a network path. I disabled integration for the virtual machines, isolated them from the Mac OS X hosts, and moved the files from the subfolder under Public to the regular Documents folder for the Windows 7 user account. Now the files are saved and created in a normal place. I set one program to not use a shared file. Copying the needed files to the other computer and keeping them up to date is inconvenient but can be done. The other program doesn't rely on Microsoft's file sharing to share data.

Unfortunately, my second attempt isn't an ideal solution. I'm not sure what'll happen to the files saved in the Documents folder of the Windows user account if someone tries to switch off isolation. The files are secure but the virtual machines aren't integrated with OS X and I expect that'll be annoying to the users, too. What can I do to keep the files secure and not have the virtual machines isolated?

 

[3rd attempt]
After some research on Sunday and Monday I went back and disabled isolation, disabled file and printer sharing, and disabled public folder sharing for both virtual machines. Somehow the Windows virtual machine can still access the files saved in the Mac OS X file system with sharing disabled. Public folder sharing isn't needed even though the share paths start with pfs. Windows complains that file and printer sharing is disabled. A yellow notification bar across the top of the Explorer window is displayed. Maybe I should find a way to stop Windows from mentioning that so someone doesn't switch on sharing to dismiss the message.

 

Hello Rwom,
Please follow the steps suggested below and let us know the result.
1. Change both VM's in to Bridged and selected the Default adapter.
2. Go to VM configure > Sharing > Share folder > choose none.
3. Uncheck shared profile.
4. Now select network location to Home network on Control panel > Network and sharing center for the both Virtual Machine.
5. Once they both are in home network, go to Control Panel, typing homegroup in the search box, and then clicking HomeGroup > Click Join now, and then complete the wizard n entering the password for home group.
6. Restart the virtual machine and check if the issue still persisting.