The increasing use of Microsoft SharePoint to store sensitive business data and extend access and collaboration to partners, customers, and suppliers has outpaced native SharePoint security capabilities. More and more organizations are storing and accessing sensitive, regulated information through this platform.

To improve business security, organizations must invest in organizing, managing, and protecting these valuable assets. Over the next week, we will take a closer look at the five lines of defense you need to secure your SharePoint environment from both internal and external threats. Here’s challenge #1…

Ensure access rights remain aligned with business needs.
“Unstructured data now accounts for more than 90% of the Digital Universe.”-IDC 2011

SharePoint Security Gap:
Without an aggregated, centralized system to view rights information, SharePoint permissions for each site collection must first be extracted to an Excel spreadsheet and then combined by hand to analyze. And, that analysis must be done manually within Excel or exported – yet again – to a third-party analytics platform.

(This is a page from the SharePoint Security Playbook. Download complete eBook)

Previous and upcoming posts in this series:
Challenge #1: Ensure access rights remain aligned with business needs.
Challenge #2: Address compliance mandates.
Challenge #3: Respond to suspicious activity in real time.
Challenge #4: Protect Web applications from attack.
Challenge #5: Take control when migrating data.
Download: SharePoint Security Playbook [eBook]