Every organization’s needs to share their content with the end users, partners and clients who are not a part of the company or are located at some different location. You will also use it in case your organization has many Office subscriptions and it is through external sharing that your organization can share their content with the users outside without having to create separate accounts for them.
External sharing helps to give access to any content that you are not willing to share with people who are not a part of the organizations and may raise security concerns. So, it is only with proper planning and structured hierarchy of permission that sharing content would be possible. Otherwise, the organization will be at risk.
External Sharing is a feature in the SharePoint Online, which is used by the users in the company to share the content outside the organization like clients, vendors, customers and partners. Before configuring the external sharing settings, it is important to know the different options which are provided by SharePoint Online. You can also choose any one of them based on your needs.
This is the option, which allows sharing the content with external users, and also any new external users. But for this they need to sign in or offer the verification code in order to access the content. You can share the content with they and they will receive an email invitation containing the link where they have to sign in.
You cannot share the content with the external users using this option. If the users have access to the content then they will lose access to it. It is only users within the organization who will have access to the data. So, to prevent external sharing, you will need this option.
With this option, you can share the content in SharePoint Online with users who already exist. They can access the content by sharing the invitations sent by the organization in Azure AD.
While sharing the content with someone, you may feel that some sensitive information is also shared with some unauthorized users. So, if you want to disable the external sharing then you need to follow some good practices.
It is important to share the content securely and the external users must sign in by using the same account to which the invitations are sent.
How SharePoint Modern Document Libraries Help to Manage Important Data
Ensure that no external users have permissions to the secured content and no external users get access to the content through the SharePoint groups.
You should never share any content using anonymous links as they will now need sign in. Any authenticated users can also misuse their rights so if needed set expiration, password and block download by using the anonymous links.
Share the content with only trusted and authenticate users so that you can have a proper tracking of the shared activities and which files are shared with whom.
Summary:
External sharing in SharePoint Online needs proper planning and the content should be shared carefully with the external users so that only authorized users have access to the documents and web content.