Managing Files Shared Internally and Externally in Google Drive [The School Admin’s Guide]

As an educational institution, you store plenty of sensitive information in your Google Workspace cloud. With thousands of users in the domain, we’re talking about roughly millions of files to manage.

Google Drive file sharing greatly supports classroom management, collaboration, and communication in school, but it may also lead to potential data privacy risks. Keeping an eye on files shared internally and externally is crucial for Google admins concerned about cybersecurity and data protection.

In this post, we’ll explore:

• – How auditing and management of file sharing benefits your domain security 
• – GAT Lab’s functionalities for managing files shared in and externally
• – Securing teacher offboarding process to avoid data leaks

Benefits of Files Share Auditing and Management

Google Drive is a powerful and user-friendly platform for storing files in various formats and sharing them in three ways:

1. Internally, among your users in the school’s Drive
2. From external users to users in your Google domain
3. From your users to external users outside your domain  

With a proactive approach to managing these resources, your school’s Drive stays free from chaos and security gaps. Implementing well-thought-out shared file auditing and management strategies brings multiple advantages:

• ▫️ Reduces the risk of potential data leaks caused unintentionally by students and teachers without high-level IT skills.
• ▫️ Ensures the school’s compliance with internal and external data privacy regulations for educational institutions.
• ▫️ Prevents data loss, learning, and work disruption in the case of accidentally deleting files stored in the cloud.
• ▫️ Strengthens school cybersecurity, decreasing the risk of unauthorized data exposure, breaches, and ransomware attacks.
• ▫️ Allows admins to identify security vulnerabilities and take quick actions to reinforce sensitive data protection.
• ▫️ Provides full control over shared files, increasing the admins’ confidence and leading to optimal decision-making.

Discovering GAT Labs’ Google Drive File Sharing Features

GAT Labs offers comprehensive solutions to assist Google admins in auditing and managing file shares. By deploying them, you gain a granular overview of all files shared internally and externally on Google Drive. You can be sure that your sensitive data is secure from unauthorized access and breaches.

Key GAT Labs’ Features for Shared File Management

1. Auditing Shared in Files

Find and review externally owned Google Drive files shared into your domain from outside. Remove your user’s access to those files and create their copy.

✅ GAT+ is the only tool that will report external files shared into your domain.

🔎 View the listing of all files shared into your Google domain.
🔎 Identify shared-in Google Drive files from external users.

2. Auditing Files Shared Externally

Find files your users shared publicly to protect your school’s data. Remove all shares outside your domain from your files to reduce external file sharing risks. Identify the most exposed files by reviewing how many users a document is shared with and how many have viewed it.

🔎 Remove external sharing on files with sensitive information.
🔎 Set an alert for shared out Drive files by any given user.

3. Permission Management

Control sharing permissions to reduce access levels and secure your sensitive data. Find, replace, or remove external sharing permissions for active and inactive files and users in bulk.

🔎 Remove all permissions to all ‘Sensitive’ folders and their sub-folders.

4. Sharing Policies Customization

Strengthen data security with customized file-sharing policies tailored to your school’s needs. Adjust permissions and sharing rules to students, teachers, specific groups, and teams.

🔎 Detect a sharing policy violation.

5. Real-time File Sharing Monitoring

Track file-sharing actions within your Google domain and detect unusual activity that may lead to potential data leaks. Get real-time alerts of policy violations and react quickly.

🔎 Set up Google Drive DLP alerts for shared out files.
🔎 Alert on Google Drive shares to specific email addresses.

6. Automated Reporting

Schedule regular reports on files shared outside your Google domain. Send them to the users to improve security and visibility.

🔎 Create scheduled reports in Drive audit.

Secure Teacher Offboarding with File Sharing Management

You’ve certainly experienced one of the trickiest moments for your data security: teacher offboarding.

High teacher turnover causes a lot of additional workload for admins. Ex-staff members often leave a lot of files saved (and shared!) on their Google Drive. In some schools, after leaving, they continue to use their Gmail, but keeping full access to the Drive may pose several privacy risks.

It’s the school admin’s role to control the constantly changing environment of Google Workspace. It means identifying and managing inactive accounts, removing their permissions, and the access to files shared in and outside the school domain. 

Here are some good practices to enhance the security and efficiency of your teacher offboarding process.

1. Schedule removing files shared out. With GAT+, you can automatically remove public file permissions for files shared outside the school domain for longer than a given number of days.
2. Remove all sharing permissions. Schedule automatic removal or replacement of any file permissions after a specific period from when a file was accessed for the last time.
3. Transfer file ownerships. Use GAT Unlock to securely transfer ownership of departing teachers’ files. This way, you ensure no critical files are lost and prevent ex-employees from accessing data unauthorizedly.
   
   
   
4. Remove all shares of files owned by a teacher. Whatever the number of files a teacher stored in the Drive, you can remove all their shares with automated workflows in GAT Flow and make them private to keep your school data safe.

How to Improve your Google Classroom Onboarding & Offboarding?

Closing Thoughts

Proper internal and external file share audits and management maintain your sensitive data safe and enforce your DLP efforts. However, managing file shares and the entire domain is a never-ending journey and requires regular reviews and adjustments.

High-performance auditing and management tools such as GAT Suite for Education take the daily work of Google admins to the next efficiency level. With such robust solutions, you can rest assured that your Google Workspace for Education is a safe and secure place for your students and teachers.