Audit file/folder access for large Business / Group Dropbox account

Question

I've taken over management of an organisation with several large business dropbox accounts.

I can see we have a large amount of data that has been shared with external parties, there has been no oversight of this and it would appear that there are some documents that are sensitive that have been shared that shouldn't have been.

I really need to audit the entire tenant, and I will need to do so reasonably regularly going forward, but I can't seem to find the tools to do so.

Other threads on this site suggest that our only option is to use the the command line API tool to script our own audit of Dropbox access? Can you confirm that this is the case?

To be explicit, what I am looking for is to be able to list folders / folder paths and which groups or individual users are able to access that folder, or if some other sharing feature has been used to allow access to those files outside of the immediate users that have primary access to the dropbox tenant.

Are there any tools that allow this for Dropbox?

Ben_stratton-Woodward · Answer

You only get a list of files being shared externally. It won't help you with an internal access control audit. Dropbox offers almost nothing in that regard and it is one of its major failings.

MrPatrick1 · Answer

Hi Austin,

That looks exactly as I would expect, all the detail I would need to audit existing access and a nice clear consistent format I could use to report on changes and so on.

Happily I quit that job a few months ago so isn't really relevant to me now! If I'm ever back managing a dropbox account though I'll be sure to check in on that feature.

Thanks,

Patrick

AustinAtDropbox · Answer

Hello,

One additional solution I wanted to call your attention to is the External Sharing Report. You can find this under the Security tab in the Admin Console. From there, you can search files to see what's shared outside of the team and run a more comprehensive report. If you run a report, we'll generate a spreadsheet and place it directly in your Dropbox. It'll include these columns:

This doesn't quite combine "who has access" inside your team and "who has access" outside the team, but it does give a more comprehensive view of what's been shared externally.

I'm a Product Manager working on security tools for teams, so I'd love to hear from you if this helps solve the problem and what else you'd like to see in this space.

Thanks for taking the time to give us feedback!

Austin