Auditing Sharing Permissions
Audit permissions with Folders, to help ensure your data confidentiality meets your sharing requirements.
Introduction
Auditing refers to a process of loading and verifying the sharing permissions of all the folder items or results. These are then displayed in the Actions column for each item, with any permissions that are obviously incompatible with confidentiality tags highlighted in red and amber for easy visual identification.
Icon Key
- pets - An owner of an item who is not you
- cloud_done - You are the owner of this item (or Team Drive Organiser)
- mood - Permission is for you
- face - Permission is for an individual (e.g. not your primary email address)
- group - Permission is for a group
- domain - Permission is for an entire organisation / domain
- public - Permission is for anyone
- mode_edit - Permission is to write to the item (no icon implies just read or comment rights)
- new_releases - Item can be found via searching (no link required)
Items that are tagged with Confidentiality - High or Confidentiality - Medium will have the following permissions highlighted:
- Domain - Has the file been accidentally shared with your whole organisation? If so, and your organisation/domain contains users who might not be authorised to view that confidential information, then they may be able to view the file if an email containing the link were sent to them (in an email chain for example). If the file needs to be viewed by a large number of users (teachers for example) but not other users (e.g. students) then consider creating a group for the authorised users and sharing the file with them, as opposed to using link sharing and relying on keeping the line confidential.
- Anyone - Confidential files should probably not be shared by link, as anyone in receipt of the link can view the data. This could happen as links are often shared by email, and once that email has been sent, it could be easily forwarded on to another person. For confidential files that need to be shared outside your domain, you should normally share by email address so that the recipient has to use (or create) their account to view the file.
- Searchable - Confidential files should never need to be searchable outside your domain, and probably not inside it either!
- External User - Confidential files shared with external users will also be highlighted (in a different colour). It is normally perfectly reasonable to share data externally, provided adequate controls are put in place (e.g. legal or service agreements, background checks etc.). By using a different colour, these external shares can be quickly identified and verified where required. Sharing data via Google Drive is much more secure than sharing by email/file transfer, as permissions can be revoked by the owning user.
These permissions may be appropriate for you, but they should be double checked to make sure that confidential data is not disclosed to unintended recipients.
Summary Report
Once the auditing process is complete, a summary of all the sharing permissions will be displayed in a modal dialog box. This includes the total number of items shared in different ways, and a list of all the email addresses for domains, groups and users with which items are shared. These lists are ranked in descended order, so the recipients of the most number of shared items will appear first.
Usage
A valuable way to use this audit feature would be to ensure you have tagged any items in your drive which you consider to be of a confidential nature. You can then periodically search your drive using the ‘Confidential’ shortcut in the search dialog. Once complete, you can run an audit to ensure that none of these items is shared more widely than you wish them to be (we can all make mistakes with sharing occasionally!).
For an organisation or small business, this type of audit could form part of your procedures to ensure compliance with your legal obligations to keep data secure and private.