At that time one put stuff on a remote machine acting as a file server. One would centrally configure which stuff is where. The Lisp Machine could also act as a

At that time one put stuff on a remote machine acting as a file server. One would centrally configure which stuff is where. The Lisp Machine could also act as a file server. It then knew users, files directories, servers, access control lists, file versions, etc. To a non-Lisp Machine one used NFS, the Lisp Machine had its own remote file protocol called NFILE. One could share software also via tar files or via its one distribution format. Networked object stores were also being developed. But that was all before encrypted network connections were used... we are talking about the 80s when TCP/IP just became a thing. Today one would need to upgrade the network stack of a Lisp Machine to support something like TLS or use it only over VPNs...