EC GROUP

Blog

Our Latest Blogs on the Cybersecurity Industry

Best Practices for Enhancing SharePoint Security in Your Business

Microsoft SharePoint is a powerful platform used by businesses to store, manage, and share information across teams and departments. While it offers robust collaboration features, it’s essential to ensure that your SharePoint environment is properly secured to prevent unauthorized access, data breaches, and compliance violations. Protecting sensitive business data in SharePoint is critical, especially as more businesses transition to cloud-based services.

Here are some of the best practices to enhance your SharePoint security and protect your business data.

1. Control Access with Permissions

One of the foundational elements of SharePoint security is permission management. By controlling who has access to specific sites, documents, or libraries, you can ensure that sensitive data is only available to authorized personnel. SharePoint allows you to assign different levels of access, such as:

Read-only for users who only need to view documents,

Edit permissions for those who need to modify content, and

Full control for administrators.

Best practices:

  • Use role-based access control (RBAC) to define permissions based on user roles.

  • Regularly audit permissions to ensure that users only have the access they need.

  • Use unique permissions on sensitive sites or libraries to restrict access to critical data.

Example: If only your HR department needs access to employee records, create a specific SharePoint library with restricted permissions so that only HR personnel can view and modify the data.

2. Implement Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)

With more businesses accessing SharePoint remotely, securing user authentication is more important than ever. Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) adds an extra layer of security by requiring users to provide two or more forms of verification (e.g., a password and a code sent to their mobile device) before accessing SharePoint. This makes it much harder for cybercriminals to compromise accounts, even if they have obtained a user’s password.

Best practices:

  • Enable MFA for all users, especially those accessing SharePoint remotely.

  • Use a reliable MFA provider, such as Microsoft Authenticator, for seamless integration with Office 365 and SharePoint.

Example: Even if a user's password is compromised in a phishing attack, MFA would prevent unauthorized access to your SharePoint environment by requiring a second factor, such as a mobile code.

3. Use Encryption for Data Protection

To ensure data security in SharePoint, you should use encryption to protect sensitive information. SharePoint supports both encryption at rest (for stored data) and encryption in transit (for data being transmitted across the network). This ensures that even if a cybercriminal intercepts data, they cannot read it without the decryption key.

Best practices:

  • Ensure that data is encrypted both at rest and in transit.

  • Use SSL/TLS encryption to protect data transmitted over the network.

Example: With SSL/TLS encryption enabled, any data transmitted between a user’s device and your SharePoint environment is encrypted, reducing the risk of interception.

4. Enable Data Loss Prevention (DLP) Policies

Data Loss Prevention (DLP) helps you protect sensitive information from being shared inappropriately, either accidentally or intentionally. In SharePoint, DLP policies allow you to automatically detect and block sensitive data (such as credit card numbers, Social Security numbers, or personal health information) from being shared or leaked.

Best practices:

  • Set up DLP policies to detect and protect sensitive data in your SharePoint environment.

  • Customize DLP policies based on your industry’s compliance requirements (e.g., HIPAA or GDPR).

Example: A DLP policy can prevent an employee from accidentally sharing a document containing customer credit card information with external partners.

5. Regularly Audit and Monitor Activity

Regular auditing and monitoring of your SharePoint environment are essential for identifying security vulnerabilities and detecting suspicious activity. SharePoint provides audit logs that track user activities such as file access, permission changes, and document modifications. Monitoring these logs can help you detect any unauthorized access or unusual behavior in your system.

Best practices:

  • Set up alerts for critical actions, such as permission changes or large-scale data downloads.

  • Review audit logs regularly to ensure compliance with security policies.

Example: If a user who typically accesses one section of SharePoint suddenly downloads large amounts of data from another, the audit logs can alert you to potential misuse or an insider threat.

6. Keep SharePoint Updated

Keeping your SharePoint environment up to date is crucial for ensuring that it remains secure. Microsoft regularly releases security updates and patches to fix vulnerabilities and improve the platform’s defenses against new threats. Delaying these updates can leave your SharePoint system exposed to cyberattacks.

Best practices:

  • Enable automatic updates for SharePoint Online to ensure you always have the latest security patches.

  • For on-premises SharePoint, create a schedule for applying updates and patches promptly.

Example: If a security vulnerability is discovered in your version of SharePoint, applying Microsoft’s latest security patch can prevent attackers from exploiting that vulnerability.

Conclusion

SharePoint offers many powerful collaboration and document management tools, but securing your SharePoint environment requires careful planning and regular attention. By implementing best practices like access controls, MFA, encryption, and DLP policies, you can significantly reduce the risk of data breaches, unauthorized access, and compliance violations. With a strong security strategy in place, your business can leverage SharePoint’s features confidently, knowing your data is safe.

At EC Group, we specialize in providing comprehensive SharePoint security solutions to help businesses protect their data, comply with regulations, and maintain a secure collaboration environment. Contact us today to learn more about securing your SharePoint environment.

Luis Figueroa