How to Find Publicly Shared Files or Public Links in Google Drive?

Google Drive is a fantastic tool for storing and sharing files, but sometimes it’s easy to lose track of what’s shared publicly vs. privately. Whether you want to review files for privacy purposes or manage sensitive information, locating publicly shared files in your Drive can be critical. In this post, we’ll cover:

1. Why Finding Publicly Shared Files Matters
2. Manual Steps to Identify Publicly Shared Files across an organization's Google Drive
3. How Strac Makes This Process Faster and Simpler
4. Next Steps

Let’s dive right in.

1. Why Finding Publicly Shared Files Matters?

• Data Privacy: Ensuring that no sensitive or confidential data is publicly accessible.
• Security Compliance: Keeping track of externally shared documents is essential to comply with regulations and protect your company’s information.
• Organization and Efficiency: Too many publicly shared files can be hard to manage. Identifying and organizing them cuts down on clutter.

2. Manual Steps to Identify Publicly Shared Files across an organization's Google Drive

There is truly no way for admins to see all publicly shared files, i.e. files with "Anyone with the link" sharing permissionin one place using Google Drive. However, an individual user can search for publicly shared files in their own Drive, admins don’t have this global view.

3. How Strac finds & remediates Publicly Shared Files in Google Drive?

Strac automates your search for publicly shared files and helps you securely manage sensitive information. Here’s a brief look at how it works:

1. Connect Your Google Drive
   • In the Strac dashboard, add a Google Drive connector.
2. Automated Scanning & Monitoring
   • Strac scans your Drive for various risk factors, including publicly shared files. This eliminates the manual guesswork of searching and filtering.
   • Set Alerts: Configure alerts to notify you if any file switches to “Anyone with the link” or “Public on the web.”
3. Dashboard Review
   • The Strac dashboard shows you a list of publicly accessible files immediately, so you can see everything in one place.
   • You’ll also see critical details like file type, permissions, and a quick preview of sensitive content.

4. ‍One-Click Remediation: Within Strac, select a file and update its sharing permissions right away. OR select all files that match the criteria and remove public access. No more back-and-forth between Drive and security tools.

Strac Benefits

• Time Savings: Automatically scanning your Drive for publicly shared files means you don’t have to do it manually each time.
• Real-Time Alerts: If someone on your team accidentally makes a file public, you’ll know right away over Slack or Teams OR push automatically to your favorite SIEM tool.
• Centralized Security: Strac does more than just track public sharing—it can also detect potential PII (personally identifiable information) or sensitive data, all from one platform.