Top 8 Ways to Mitigate Risks in SharePoint Deployment

Deployment of the useful web application development platform of SharePoint involves certain risks. The SharePoint sites, which primarily include the SharePoint Online and the hosted SharePoint farms, have high chances of falling prey to some of the serious content security risks. Considering the fact that SP Online is highly preferred by all types of enterprises today for regulation of data, securing this data is a dire necessity. In fact, organizations are often found facing certain problems when it comes to maintaining the security of the data in SharePoint. The risks need to be mitigated without any wastage of time to ensure smooth work flow.

Here is a brief overview of the risks involved in SP deployment along with the possible ways of reducing their effects.


1. Less Awareness about SharePoint Content

The lack of awareness about SP content is a prominent risk in the deployment of this particular web application development platform. The two main ways of spreading increased awareness are implementation of the governance guidelines along with providing of content classification. The end users should be trained accordingly for performing periodic scans of content. Teams also have the option of making use of the SP metadata as well as workflows to pass the sensitive information to the secure locations.

2. Failing to Secure the Content in SP Servers, Transit and Endpoints

Securing the content in the SharePoint servers as well as endpoints is necessary. Enterprises must make it a point to implement solutions that ensure the security of the content on the SP servers as well as the backups through access control and encryption. Additionally, the teams should also go for a whole-disk encryption for endpoints and most essentially, laptops. The SSL encryption for data in transit should also be enabled by the security administrators.

3. Misconfiguration of the Access Controls and Permissions

This is yet another risk that often poses a problem in the deployment of SharePoint. The solution lies in auditing the existing SharePoint permissions and then reviewing or creating of the corporate access control policies. Following this, the SP permissions should be aligned with the corporate directory services, by which, the administrators can get an idea about the usage of inheritance as well as unmanaged item-level permissions.

4. SP Platform Security Risks

The SharePoint platforms need to be hardened by means of disabling the ports as well as services that are not essential to the functioning of the platform. Regular patching apart from whitelisting of applications also helps in reducing the risks of platform security.

5. Failing to Limit the Administrator and Service Accounts

One essential way in which the risk of failing to limit the administrator as well as service accounts can be reduced is by limiting the privileges on service accounts. Disabling the install account and not using the shared administrator accounts are other prominent ways of mitigating this particular risk.

6. SP System Architecture and Network Configuration Issues

The system architecture as well as network configuration issues related to the SharePoint can be reduced by putting a dedicated SP web front end in a DMZ and by making use of a single-function-per-server approach. Hardening of the SP, OS as well as the database as per the best practices is also highly recommended.

7. Issues Related to SP and Malware

Risks arising from SharePoint as well as Malware can be solved by implementation of the server malware solution along with a regular updating of the anti-virus definitions.

8. Difficulty in Performing Backups and Providing DR Capability

The only possible way in which this problem can be solved is by performing annual backups as well as tests and restoring them on a regular basis.

Managing the above-mentioned security risks through an application of the appropriate security controls helps in reducing the level of content security as well as compliance risks in SP to a great extent. If you were to attempt a SharePoint site migration project, understanding of these best practices would ensure a successful migration.

We provide SharePoint bespoke development services. If you would like to know more about the expertise of our SharePoint programmers, please get in touch with us at Mindfire Solutions.

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