Why your business needs effective oversharing management.
Data privacy and security are paramount concerns for businesses operating in the digital age. SharePoint Online, a widely used collaboration platform, offers extensive file sharing capabilities that can sometimes lead to oversharing sensitive information. Addressing oversharing in SharePoint Online is crucial for maintaining data integrity and protecting personal and business-critical information. With more businesses now adopting Copilot and AI, oversharing risks are now a big area of concern.
Want to get your SharePoint Online data under control? Have a chat with the Perspicuity team and see how we can help you implement robust governance to help keep your data safe.
The Risks of Oversharing
Oversharing in SharePoint Online can pose significant risks to organisational security and privacy. When sensitive documents are shared beyond their intended audience, it opens the door to potential data breaches, unauthorised access, and compliance violations. Moreover, the inadvertent disclosure of personal data can damage trust and lead to costly legal repercussions.
Common Scenarios of Oversharing
Understanding the common scenarios of oversharing can help organisations recognise and mitigate these risks effectively:
Public Links
creating public links for documents without proper controls can expose sensitive data to anyone with the link.
Site Privacy Settings
Your site privacy settings being set to public.
"Everyone Except External Users"
The use of "everyone except external users" domain group within sites.
Sensitivity Labels
Having no sensitivity labels on sites or files.
Strategies to Address Oversharing in SharePoint Online
Employing effective strategies to address oversharing is essential for safeguarding your organisation. Here's how you can do it:
Develop Clear Policies
Establish clear guidelines for sharing documents and managing permissions. Implement a SharePoint Champions programme and educate employees about the risks of oversharing and the importance of adhering to data sharing policies.
Create and Apply Sensitivity Labels
Apply sensitivity labels to your files in SharePoint Online. You can also apply a label to the SharePoint site, which can include further settings for privacy, external user access, and access from unmanaged devices. With Purview, you can apply retention to files in SharePoint Online to ensure that data is only kept for as long as needed. Data Loss Prevention can be used to prevent the sharing of sensitive information within SharePoint Online.
Regularly Audit Your Environments
Review the sites in your tenancy that have external sharing enabled within the SharePoint Admin Center. Additionally, identify the most popular sites in your business and review these to ensure that permissions are being handled correctly.
Set Default Privacy Settings
Ensure that the default setting for all sites created within your tenancy is private, which can be done with or without sensitivity labels.
Control Sharing Settings
Manage how business users can share files within the sharing settings in the SharePoint Admin Center. It is best practice to ensure that the default sharing link experience is not set to “Anyone with the link”.
Conclusion
Addressing oversharing in SharePoint Online is vital for protecting your organisation’s sensitive data and ensuring compliance with data privacy regulations. We can help you develop governance and control within SharePoint and utilise the tools within Purview to protect your data throughout its lifecycle, enabling your business to be as protected as possible while making use of new technology such as Copilot.