With recent news of one of the largest security breaches in US history, many organizations are looking to their SharePoint environments to better understand just how vulnerable their data is, and whether they have in place adequate governance policies and procedures to prevent a similar breech. In this webinar, we'll discuss some of what happened in the case of Snowden and the NSA's SharePoint environment, and clarify the differences between willful intent versus poor governance planning. We'll help you to outline steps you can take within your own organization to improve security and lock down permissions, closing off any gaps within your governance strategy.

1. Joel Oleson
Managing Director of S6
@joeloleson
http://sharepointjoel.com
Christian Buckley
Evangelist at Axceler Now
Metalogix
@Buckleyplanet

3. NSA Recap
Real World SharePoint Permissions & Auditing
Time for an Audit
SharePoint Lockdown & Hardening
Time to Review Data Policies
Tools to Automate Enforce & Report

6. "This leaker was a sysadmin who was trusted with
moving the information to actually make sure that the
right information was on the SharePoint servers that
NSA Hawaii needed," NSA Chief Alexander
The leaks represented "a huge break in trust and
confidence“
… They still don’t know what was taken…

9.  Users CAN NOT tell what permissions/RIGHTS are on the site they are uploading documents to.
 Search EXPOSES documents from EVERYWHERE
 DATA is not ENCYPTED by default
 30% or more Site Owners have left or moved jobs
 More than half of sites after 3 years are Abandoned
 No cleanup of permissions, easier to add groups and authenticated users
 Most sensitive sites are in the site directory and in enterprise search
 All data is stored in the same databases
 Result: People didn’t TRUST SharePoint. Sensitive data is exposed to search and users have rights
to content they shouldn’t. INFOSEC says “SHUT IT DOWN!”

10. Permissions
Troubleshooting why users cannot see the content they should
Reporting for different types of compliance
Auditing who has access to sensitive content
Usage/Activity
Finding what content is, or is not, being used
Planning for future growth
Understanding hardware requirements
Storage
Monitoring growth for performance reasons
Understanding hardware requirements
Reorganizing taxonomy based on Storage needs
Audit
Needing to show who accessed what and when, to adhere to internal or external compliance
requirements
Performance
Monitoring page load times to uncover problems
Planning for increased usage

11. • Auditing
• User access records
• Troubleshooting functionality problems that most commonly
stem from end users trying to perform a task without having
the correct permissions.

12.  Perform regular security checks across your farm,
down to the document level
 Proactively review, delete, and reassign user
permissions as needed
 Clean up users who are no longer in
Active Directory but are in SharePoint
 Review SharePoint groups
 Have a process to backup and restore permissions
 Document site permissions (roles) so that its easier to
duplicate them for new employees
 Monitor SharePoint licensing

26.  GlobalWorkforce (LOW)– Open to all Authenticated users. Listed in directories,
boosted in search when relevant, cheap storage, flexible archiving policies.
Published and Mobile Accessible.
 Team/Group Sensitive (MEDIUM) – Secured to a team or group. No permitted
use of Authenticated users at top site collection level, not listed in global site
directory. Security trimmed and included in enterprise search. Cheap storage.
Published and Mobile Accessible.
 Classified/Business Confidential (HIGH) – Stored in separate encrypted
databases in separate data center as policy permits. Limited security to sysadmins,
regularly audited and restricted to named accounts, no security groups, only
reliable and trusted. Regular permissions audit report sent to site administrators,
Not included in Enterprise search, Not included in any directories. No use of Auth
Users at any level.VPN Only No external publishing. Auditing activated. Any
changes to permissions or auditing reported immediately.

30.  Who has Admin rights to your SharePoint & SQL or External Storage servers?
 What sites have open access anonymous or authenticated users?
 How are you tracking who has access?
 What File was leaked how will you find it, and determined who moved, deleted,
copied, etc…
 What are you using for Auditing? SharePoint Usage Logs and IIS logs are NOT
AUDIT LOGS!!!
 Default Settings Are NOT Designed for Highly Sensitive Data – MUST CONFIGURE!
 Not Encrypted
 No Auditing
 No Reporting

31.  Use Reverse Proxy with Content Inspection
 Don’t expose SharePoint to the Internet Directly
 Lock down Web Services
 Use Lockdown Mode (Automatic for Publishing site,
but needs activated through STSADM or Powershell
for all other site templates)
 Penn Testing and Lockdown of unneeded services
(SMTP?) and communication Ports
 Restrict Firewall to only required ports
 Follow SharePointVulnerabilities
 http://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-
26/product_id-11116/Microsoft-Sharepoint-Server.html
 Least Priv across the board!
 Keep up to date with Service Packs and Significant
CUs Patches (N-2 on CUs)
Kudos to Liam Cleary SharePoint MVP
 http://www.slideshare.net/helloitsliam/think-you-
can-hack-sharepoint-sharepoint-fest-
dc?from_search=3

41. Process
Technology to Simplify
the Process
People to Enforce
Policies
Site Archiving
 Ensure Sites are Still being
used every 6 months. Backup
and Delete unused sites. Fix
ownership.
 Archiving Process. Invalid
Ownership Detection process.
 SharePoint Team with regular
audits from Infosec.

42.  1. SharePoint Server & SQL Hardening & Penetration Testing and Intrusion Detection
 2. Managing permissions, Site and Library ownership?
 3. Data Retention Policy? Site Archiving or Data lifecycle policies?
 4. Databases/Sites/Files Encrypted
 5. Rights Managed
 6. Admins have rights to data?
 7. Audit process and tool?
 8. Search Exposure? PII
 9. Authentication - Just because it's over SSL doesn't mean it's secure. Amazing what can happen
inside an SSL Tunnel. Content inspection!
 10. Is SharePoint out of the box security and auditing good enough? Should you consider building
extra governance around your sites and data for policies or a third party tool?
 - See more at:
http://www.sharepointjoel.com/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?List=0cd1a63d%2D183c%2D4fc2%2D8320%
2Dba5369008acb&ID=688#sthash.YTq35lto.dpuf

43. It’s time to stop hoping something won’t happen… Prepare
for it.
Governance = putting those plans in place and building
trust.
SharePoint Out of Box Does NOT address all your auditing
and compliance needs for any business critical
environment
 Consider Third Party or Custom Development
 Axceler/Metalogix ControlPoint & Salient6 are here to help
Don’t be surprised when you find centralized permissions
management a nightmare.You must have policies and
cleanup processes.

44. Joel Oleson @joeloleson
SharePointJoel.com
Salient6 http://www.salient6.com
Christian Buckley @buckleyplanet
BuckleyPlanet.com
Metalogix.com