AI can open everything your people can, so close old “shared with everyone” folders first.
What it means
AI that searches your files respects your permissions, which sounds safe. But a folder shared with everyone years ago is still shared with everyone, and AI makes it easy to find.
A simple example
Years ago, someone shared the budget folder with the whole company to get one quick answer, and everyone forgot about it. Today an employee asks the company’s AI tool about budgets, and it answers straight from that folder.
Do it yourself
- Microsoft 365: in the SharePoint admin center, go to Policies, then Sharing. Set both sliders below “Anyone”, or require “Anyone” links to expire and be view only.
- Google Workspace: in the Admin console, go to Apps, then Google Workspace, then Drive and Docs, then Sharing settings, then Sharing options. Under “Sharing outside of” your organization, choose Off, On or Allowlisted Domains. If it’s on, untick the box that starts “When sharing outside of your organization is allowed”, which lets people make files visible to anyone with the link. Editions with trust rules set this through trust rules instead.
- Then look at who can open your most sensitive sites, folders and shared drives, starting with HR and finance, and fix those first.
How to check
Share a file as an ordinary user. Sharing with anyone who has the link shouldn’t be offered. Then confirm that the people who can open your HR and finance folders are the people who should.
What that misses
Finding overshared folders by hand is slow, and the reports that find them quickly can need extra licences. After a cleanup, people go on sharing files to get work done, so it needs repeating.
What we do for you
We run the sharing reports and fix the worst sites first. Before AI goes on, we fence off the sensitive ones, such as HR and finance.
“What we do for you” describes work we do for our clients, and what’s included depends on your plan. Already a client? Your engineer can tell you what your plan covers.
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