Best practices checklist for SharePoint site security

Read time: 6 minutes

If you are a user of SharePoint, security should always be utmost priority at each level. With so much valuable information stored on your site, it’s important to make sure that safeguards are in place & actively enforced to minimize any risk of an unwanted breach. But with the vast array of possible risks & countless features available, where do you start? And how do you stay ahead?

Let us discuss the key aspects of making sure that your SharePoint site security is protected by exploring best practices for authentication strategies, permission management systems, data encryption methods & more. Get ready to take your SharePoint security up a notch.

1. Use Group-based permissions for site management: SharePoint allows you to manage user access through groups. By assigning users to groups, you can easily manage permissions, restrict data access & regulate user activity. It is recommended to set up different groups based on users’ roles to ensure no one gains unauthorized access.Assign permissions to the groups & not to individual users to make the management of user access easier. To ensure optimum security, it is essential to audit the groups on a regular basis & revoke access for any unnecessary groups or users.
2. Appoint one administrator per team site: Most SharePoint sites contain several hub sites, sub-sites, & for every sub-site, there should be an administrator. A common mistake is to assign too many administrators to one site or subsite, which can lead to a security breach.
   We must set it in such a way that there is only one administrator per team site. As we grant permissions to multiple people, it quite increases the risk of an unauthorized change that is being made by someone with access.
3. Limit the use of item-level permissions: Item-level permissions grant specific access to individual items within a site. While this approach allows for granular control over data access, it can become difficult to manage. As you minimize the use of item-level permissions, you can make sure that permissions are consistent across the site & that all data is managed in a uniform manner.
   This approach also reduces the chances of errors & makes it easier to track & manage access. Also, minimizing item-level permissions helps maintain the optimal performance of SharePoint, as numerous item-level permissions can slow down the site. So, you must customize permissions in SharePoint keeping security in mind.
4. Protect your content shared with external users: Sharing content with external users is a business requirement but it can introduce risks to SharePoint security. Protecting the content shared with external users is important to prevent unauthorized access, data breaches, & other security risks. Thus, you can use guest links, expiration dates for links & password protection to protect content shared with external users.
   Moreover, data loss prevention can be implemented to monitor data shared outside the organization, enforce policies, & prevent unauthorized access.
5. Specifying network location: For SharePoint site security to be more secure, it is quite crucial to limit access to only your authorized users. One way to do this is by specifying the network location/IP addresses in the SharePoint Admin Center. This helps you to define a specific range of IP addresses that can access your site.
   Now, you can prevent all the unauthorized access attempts from outside your organization’s network or from any unknown IP addresses. This will add another extra layer of security & reduces the chances of an attacker from gaining any kind of unauthorized access.
6. Utilize retention policies on your site: Retention policies are rules that determine how long a type of content should be retained & when it should be deleted. With retention policies on your SharePoint site, you can keep a check on that the sensitive data is not stored longer than necessary.
   Retention policies can be applied in SharePoint to specific content types, libraries, or sites & can be customized to meet your organization’s specific needs. By regularly deleting obsolete data, you reduce the chances of hackers accessing sensitive information & increase the overall SharePoint site security.
7. Turning off anonymous sharing features: Anonymous sharing allows anyone with the link to access content on your SharePoint site without requiring authentication. While this can be convenient for external users, it also increases the risks of a data breach or unauthorized access to sensitive information. Disabling anonymous sharing helps only authorized users to view & access your site’s content.
   Furthermore, this can help prevent phishing attacks that attempt to lure users to click on malicious links to your anonymous shared content. With this, SharePoint site security is not compromised & that only users with proper permissions have access to content.
8. Educate your team on security measures: One important but often overlooked way to improve your SharePoint site security is to train your employees on proper security practices. This can include best practices for creating secure passwords, identifying phishing scams, & recognizing suspicious activity on the site. By educating employees on how to avoid common security risks, you reduce the likelihood of a data breach or hacking attempt.Also, it’s critical to enforce secure practices within your workplace culture to promote frequent security checks & active measures to ensure that your SharePoint site stays secure. After making security part of your organizational culture, you can significantly cut down the chance of security breaches on your network.

Conclusion

All things considered, there are many ways to enhance your SharePoint site security. Of course, a combination of all the methods discussed in this article gives you maximum assurance that your data remains safe & within the prescribed guidelines. Remember that all procedures come with their own risks.

Study the system well before practicing anything new in your development environment. Testing each process first will help protect against any unauthorized access or damage to data stored in SharePoint sites.

Moreover, if you are looking for a convenient, cost-effective & quick SharePoint migration solution then Kernel Migration for SharePoint should definitely be your go-to option. With just a few easy steps, you can migrate data from existing on-premises systems to the cloud via this SharePoint content migration tool. It also supports cross-platform migrations & allows you to select specific items that need to be migrated.