How to govern External Access in Google Workspace
A step-by-step guide to governing External Access in Google Workspace with Rencore: detect, review by owner and severity, and remediate with an audit trail.
Governing External Access in Google Workspace means finding where it goes wrong, reviewing the findings by owner and severity, and remediating with an audit trail. Rencore covers this concern for Google Workspace with the pre-built controls below, so it becomes a repeatable check rather than a one-off cleanup. The steps that follow apply the same detect, review, remediate loop to External Access.
Steps
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Inventory Google Workspace
Connect Google Workspace and let Rencore build a continuous inventory of its resources, owners, and configuration, so governance starts from what exists rather than a stale export.
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Detect with policies
Turn on the pre-built policies that cover External Access in Google Workspace to surface oversharing, sprawl, and misconfiguration on the first scan, before writing a single custom rule.
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Review by owner and severity
Use the Google Workspace reports to review findings by owner, category, and severity, and to share them with stakeholders who do not have a seat in the platform.
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Remediate and automate
Apply automations to fix findings at scale, route sensitive changes through approvals, and keep every action reversible and logged for the audit trail.
Google Workspace controls for External Access
Grounded in the Rencore catalog. See the full Google Workspace catalog on the Google Workspace connector page.
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Drive file reachable externally
Active Drive files shared outside the domain are externally reachable, raising the likelihood any weakness is exploited.
Severity: High -
Drive file reachable by anyone with the link
Active Drive files with anyone-with-link sharing are reachable without authentication, raising exploitation likelihood.
Severity: High -
Shared Drive open to non-domain members
Shared Drives without the domain-users-only restriction are externally reachable, raising exploitation likelihood.
Severity: Medium -
Group reaches external members
Groups with external members forward distribution and shares outside the tenant, raising leak likelihood.
Severity: Medium -
Chat space allows external users
Chat spaces allowing external users are reachable from outside the tenant, raising leak likelihood.
Severity: Medium -
Drive file shared with anyone-with-link
Detects active Drive files where the link grants access to anyone (any internet user).
Severity: High -
Drive file shared outside the domain
Detects active Drive files with at least one permission granted to users outside the tenant domain.
Severity: High -
Shared Drive allows external members
Detects Shared Drives where the domain-users-only restriction is disabled.
Severity: High -
Google Group with external members
Detects Google groups with at least one member outside the tenant domain.
Severity: Medium -
Drive link without expiration
Detects anyone-with-link shares that have no expiration date.
Severity: Medium -
Shared Drive without domain restriction holds content
Detects Shared Drives where the domain-users-only restriction is disabled and the drive contains files.
Severity: High -
External Drive shares over time
Count of externally shared Drive files created per month over the last 12 months.
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Shared Drives with external members
Top 10 Shared Drives ranked by external member count.
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Groups with external members
Top 10 Google groups ranked by external member count.
