In today’s fast-paced digital world, sharing files quickly and securely is a must! But while file sharing makes our work easier, it’s important to understand the potential risks if permissions aren’t handled correctly. Knowing the difference between various file-sharing options—especially between sharing files externally and sharing them publicly—can help keep your data safe. Plus, using strong data loss prevention (DLP) measures can reduce the risks even further.
Why File Sharing Permissions Matter
File sharing permissions control who can access, view, or edit a file. These settings aren’t just for convenience—they’re essential for protecting your data! If files are shared incorrectly, it could lead to unintentional data leaks, intellectual property theft, or even issues with legal compliance, especially in industries with strict privacy regulations like healthcare, finance, or government.
File sharing permissions are essential for protecting your data!
Let’s break down the four main types of file-sharing permissions and see how each one differs in terms of functionality and risk.
1. Private Sharing Within Your Organization
Private sharing lets you share files with specific people within your organization (like manually adding invitedcoworker@company.com). This is generally the safest option, especially for confidential projects, because only the people you choose can access the files. For example, sensitive documents like product development plans or financial reports should be shared this way to avoid them falling into the wrong hands.
This type of sharing works well with data loss prevention systems, which can monitor files for sensitive information—like social security numbers or intellectual property—and prevent them from being shared beyond their intended audience. Awesome, right?
2. Internal Sharing Across the Organization
Internal sharing makes files available to everyone within your organization (everyone@company.com). This is perfect for files like company-wide announcements, training materials, or resources that everyone needs access to. While it’s super convenient, it does come with some risk. If sensitive data is accidentally shared this way, it could lead to unintentional access by people who shouldn’t see it.
DLP systems can help by scanning files for any sensitive or proprietary information and flagging potential risks before they become bigger problems.
3. External Sharing with Specific Individuals
External sharing (i.e. inviteduser@external.com) is often used when working with clients, vendors, or other third parties. It allows you to share files outside of your organization in a controlled way, ensuring that only the invited people can access the file. So handy!
However, there’s still some risk. Even when you’re sharing with specific external permissions, the file could be forwarded or misused. That’s where DLP can step in, adding an extra layer of protection by encrypting files or requiring access credentials, so even if the file is forwarded, only the intended person can access it. That’s peace of mind!
4. Public Sharing: The Riskiest Option
Public sharing means anyone with a link can access the file. While it’s useful for sharing non-sensitive materials—like marketing documents or event invitations—it also poses the greatest risk for accidental data leaks.
If a sensitive file is shared publicly instead of with a specific person, the consequences can be serious. Public sharing opens up files to anyone who gets the link, making it difficult to control who sees or downloads them. This can lead to data breaches, intellectual property theft, or compliance violations. Be careful with this one!
Public sharing can lead to data breaches, intellectual property theft, or compliance violations.
Externally Shared vs. Publicly Shared: Why It Matters
The big difference between externally shared files and publicly shared files is control. Externally shared files are restricted to specific people outside your organization, while publicly shared files can be accessed by anyone who gets the link. The latter option creates a much bigger security risk because it’s hard to track who has viewed or downloaded the file, making it tough to contain any damage caused by unauthorized access.
Understanding this distinction is critical, especially in industries where data security is a top priority, like healthcare or finance. Sharing a file publicly that contains sensitive information could result in massive breaches, fines, and damage to your company’s reputation. Nobody wants that!
Understanding this distinction is critical, especially in industries where data security is a top priority.
The Role of dope.security in Data Loss Prevention (DLP)
With innovative solutions like dope.security’s CASB Neural, businesses can protect their sensitive data through behind the scenes monitoring and access control to cloud services, making sure your data stays safe from unauthorized access or transfers. By using machine learning and smart analytics, CASB Neural can flag for potential data risks in real time, and allow you to update file access permissions directly from the console.
Have a file accidentally available to anyone with the link? Remove Public access. Have a file shared with an external vendor, who doesn’t need the document anymore? Remove External access. You can rest easy knowing that even in tricky cloud environments, your information is well-managed.
CASB systems are essential for keeping your important data secure by monitoring and preventing unauthorized sharing of confidential files. CASB Neural automatically scans for sensitive content, like financial details, personal information, or proprietary data, before anything is shared. It’s like having a reliable watchdog that helps keep your data safe from accidental or intentional leaks.
Adding DLP to your file-sharing process offers an extra layer of protection, especially when using platforms where it’s easy to accidentally share files too broadly. With tools like CASB Neural, you get peace of mind knowing your sensitive information is safeguarded without any hassle. This added security lets you enjoy the flexibility and convenience of cloud-based platforms while keeping your data protected. It’s a simple, smart way to stay secure and stress-free.
Wrapping Up
As file-sharing continues to evolve, so do the risks that come with it. Understanding the difference between external and public sharing, along with using robust data loss prevention strategies, is crucial for keeping your data safe. It’s a great idea for organizations to regularly review their file-sharing policies, educate employees about the risks, and use technology to protect sensitive information from getting into the wrong hands.
With dope.security, you can easily review all Publicly and Externally shared files within CASB Neural, and with a click of the button turn your shared files Private. Integrate this with department-wide Secure Web Gateway (SWG) Policies and Cloud Application Control (CAC) settings and you’ll be flying the internet skies safely with your files secured in tow.
Stay safe and share smartly!
A comprehensive security solution designed to protect individuals and organizations from various cyber threats and vulnerabilities. With a focus on proactive defense and advanced technologies, Dope Security offers a range of features and services to safeguard sensitive data, systems, and networks.
About Version 2 Digital
Version 2 Digital is one of the most dynamic IT companies in Asia. The company distributes a wide range of IT products across various areas including cyber security, cloud, data protection, end points, infrastructures, system monitoring, storage, networking, business productivity and communication products.
Through an extensive network of channels, point of sales, resellers, and partnership companies, Version 2 offers quality products and services which are highly acclaimed in the market. Its customers cover a wide spectrum which include Global 1000 enterprises, regional listed companies, different vertical industries, public utilities, Government, a vast number of successful SMEs, and consumers in various Asian cities.
Everyday, people fly the friendly internet skies, visiting different websites, and sharing files with each other. They are accessing everything from Gaming to Gambling to General Entertainment websites and sharing files that may contain personal information. Now this is fine if it’s personal activity—but what if you’re part of a professional organization?
If I’m part of the security team at that organization, I’d want some controls to know where you’re going on the internet, how you’re accessing it, and who you’re sharing files with in order to keep you safe from malicious attacks and data leakage.
Is that really necessary?
Let’s take a look at some trends we’ve seen:
Total Blocks in the last 7 days? Over 60k! Where were these users going?
Almost 50% of the blocks were…you guessed it: AI/ML
Organizations are clamping down on Artificial Intelligence usage.
An example of an organization’s blocked content
Top blocked categories
49.1% AI/ML: ChatGPT, Gemini, DALL-E, etc.
8.8% File Storage: Dropbox, Box, WeTransfer, etc.
7.8% Malicious/Suspicious: Block users from being unknowingly exposed to dangerous sites
1.9% Software Downloads: Prevent employees from downloading non-approved IT apps
This data begs the question, are employees doing this intentionally?
While it’s hard to know for sure without asking them directly, we can deduce a few things.
AI is on the rise, and every employee is looking to automate their work, the data clearly shows a desire to access these tools. But they’re being blocked because company policies don’t want you uploading proprietary code or sensitive content.
Categories like ‘File Storage’ are blocked to ensure employees can not access their personal cloud storage drives, reducing the risk of data exfiltration. The most common use case we see here is a recently terminated employee trying to take company files with them.
Most of the time employees are completely unaware they are accessing a Malicious site so these blocks are protecting the accidental misstep.
This is why having a reliable and easy to use secure web gateway solution is so important. You need to be able to monitor activity and block access to sites that could be harmful, or non-productive to your organization.
Now what about those company files? I can not tell how many times leaders have said, “No I’m good…we have tight controls and I know we don’t have any publicly exposed files.”
Well, we challenged one of those leaders to run CASB Neural, here are those results:
Out of 84M Files scanned, 2.4% are Publicly exposed. That may not sound like a lot, but it’s over 2M publicly exposed files.
2M Publicly exposed files!
Another way of saying this is that the file is “publicly accessible.” That means while you personally may have never shared this file or folder with anyone outside of your organization, it still has the ability or “sharing permissions” that allow it to be exposed to an external party.
Of those 2M files, over half a million, or 25% of the found public files, fall into either Intellectual Property (IP), Personally Identifiable Information (PII), Protected Health Information (PHI) or Payment Card Industry (PCI).
IP 6.2%
PII 53.2%
PHI 5.8%
PCI 34.8%
That means either your data, your customers, vendors, or anyones data who you work with could potentially be at risk of being exposed.
What are some examples of the types of files and data we found in these categories?
Publicly exposed data rooms where anyone could download sensitive information (stock purchase agreements, equity, offer letters, etc.) about major startups
PHI documents publicly available because it was the default setting when creating a sharing link
Troves of sensitive files shared publicly, with no possible way to find out, including bank statements, etc.
So what does all this mean?
Most of the time people are not sharing sensitive information, or going to malicious websites on purpose. So having these filters in place is crucial for catching those accidental human errors that will ultimately happen.
Because as the data shows, people are trying to access sites they shouldn’t be, and unknowingly have file sharing permissions that could be huge security risks to your organization.
These solutions keep you productive and safe. So make sure you have a SWG and CASB DLP solution that is fast, reliable and invisible because at the end of the day you want it to work really well and not get in the way.
A comprehensive security solution designed to protect individuals and organizations from various cyber threats and vulnerabilities. With a focus on proactive defense and advanced technologies, Dope Security offers a range of features and services to safeguard sensitive data, systems, and networks.
About Version 2 Digital
Version 2 Digital is one of the most dynamic IT companies in Asia. The company distributes a wide range of IT products across various areas including cyber security, cloud, data protection, end points, infrastructures, system monitoring, storage, networking, business productivity and communication products.
Through an extensive network of channels, point of sales, resellers, and partnership companies, Version 2 offers quality products and services which are highly acclaimed in the market. Its customers cover a wide spectrum which include Global 1000 enterprises, regional listed companies, different vertical industries, public utilities, Government, a vast number of successful SMEs, and consumers in various Asian cities.
Need to secure non-human entities, leaky clouds, and complex environments? The companies included in our network security startups to watch series have bold ideas.
dope.security is one of Network World’s 7 network security startups to watch for 2024. It rearchitected the traditional secure web gateway (SWG) to avoid routing traffic through cloud data centers. By performing security directly on the endpoint instead of routing traffic through stopover data centers, dope.security says its SWG can boost network performance fourfold.
dope.security at a glance
Founded: 2021
What they do: Provide secure web gateways (SWG)
Funding: $20 million
Headquarters: Mountain View, California
CEO: Kunal Agarwal
Competitors include: Forcepoint (through its acquisition of Websense),
Netskope,Symantec (through its acquisitions of Blue Coat), and Zscaler
Customers include: Plansource and Success Academies
Why dope.security is a startup to watch: Cloud security risks are numerous and growing. According to ICS2’s 2024 Cloud Security Report, 96% of organizations are worried about public cloud security, and more than half (55%) consider securing multi-cloud environments as their top challenge.
Many legacy security solutions don’t have the ability to fully investigate and respond to cloud and SaaS threats. Conversely, cloud-native security solutions tend to force enterprises to route traffic through cloud data centers, which sacrifices network performance.
dope.security intends to improve cloud security and performance by rethinking legacy secure web gateway (SWG) design, removing a stop between enterprise resources and end users. The startup uses airline terminology to drive home the point, calling its architecture “fly direct.” dope.security’s SWG architecture eliminates stopovers at cloud data centers, which the startup says improves performance up to fourfold.
Instead, dope.security’s SWG performs security directly on the endpoint, including URL filtering, SSL inspection, and cloud app control. Dope.security also provides AI-powered Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) services, including Data Loss Prevention (DLP), SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM), and contextual analysis of an organization’s publicly exposed data.
The startup has raised a total of $20 million in VC funding. Its most recent round closed in March 2023, a $16 million Series A round led by Google Ventures (GV), with participation from existing investors boldstart ventures and Preface.
A comprehensive security solution designed to protect individuals and organizations from various cyber threats and vulnerabilities. With a focus on proactive defense and advanced technologies, Dope Security offers a range of features and services to safeguard sensitive data, systems, and networks.
About Version 2 Digital
Version 2 Digital is one of the most dynamic IT companies in Asia. The company distributes a wide range of IT products across various areas including cyber security, cloud, data protection, end points, infrastructures, system monitoring, storage, networking, business productivity and communication products.
Through an extensive network of channels, point of sales, resellers, and partnership companies, Version 2 offers quality products and services which are highly acclaimed in the market. Its customers cover a wide spectrum which include Global 1000 enterprises, regional listed companies, different vertical industries, public utilities, Government, a vast number of successful SMEs, and consumers in various Asian cities.
