In an assessment of a SharePoint environment we recently conducted for an enterprise organization, we discovered around 15.000 applications. They were built over many years as the organization was using their SharePoint intranet. Only a handful of these applications were commissioned by IT. The majority were built by users themselves or were built for specific departments by external consultants. While these applications had great business value, they were also, most likely, unintentionally exposing the organization to risks.
Other blogs in this series:
- Assess what’s in your SharePoint environment
- The dark side of SharePoint applications (this blog)
- The business impact of your SharePoint applications
- 3 tips for efficiently handling alerts about your SharePoint applications
- How often do you scan your SharePoint applications for vulnerabilities?
In the assessment, we found out that many applications were using JavaScript libraries with known vulnerabilities. Third-party JavaScript libraries were loaded from external servers without verifying their integrity. Some of the applications were built using deprecated technologies that prevented the organization from using the latest SharePoint capabilities.
It’s a trend
Unfortunately, this wasn’t an isolated case. Every organization we speak to and every assessment we do confirms that it’s hard for platform owners to keep track of their SharePoint applications, and understand the impact they have on their employees and organization. Poorly implemented applications decrease employee productivity and engagement. They can expose the organization to data exfiltration risks and increase support and maintenance costs.
Control your applications
An up-to-date inventory of all applications in an enterprise SharePoint environment will typically list a few thousand applications. No organization has the manpower to assess application quality manually. Not to mention, to review them regularly to keep track of any changes.
So to manage your platform effectively, what you need, is a way to have an automated process that will not only keep track of all applications but will also review them for you and warn you of any anomalies that require your immediate attention. Keeping your SharePoint applications under control doesn’t need to be hard with the right tools.
Our Rencore Governance software allows you to choose what you want to track, build relevant reports, and automate with your business processes in mind. If you would like to learn more about Rencore Governance and see it in action, please head to the Rencore Governance product page by clicking the button below.
