Network Filesystems with kerberos
Classical Unix environments use NFS as network filesystem. While NFS filesystems up to version 3 have no ability to control secure data access centrally, NFS Version 4 has kerberos integration. Up to NFS 4, security depends on the client security - if you cannot trust the local administrator (root), data access is not secure.
Another possibility is the use of AFS (Andrew File System). AFS is very stable and has large working installations. There are some commercial AFS products and OpenAFS - which is widely used and well documented.