Copilot exposes overshared SharePoint libraries
Microsoft Copilot answers natural language questions by pulling documents from SharePoint libraries. It only displays content that the user already has permission to access. This setup reveals cases of oversharing, such as libraries open to former employees or unnecessary external guests. Organizations are responding with permission reviews to reduce exposure. Copilot does not expand access rights or correct misconfigurations on its own. It works only within existing permissions and assumes prior audits have taken place.
Before Copilot, permission problems in SharePoint stayed out of sight because users stuck to familiar folders and sites without running broad searches that would show the full extent of their access. Now simple queries can surface documents from across the tenant, which means years of ad-hoc Teams creation and loose external sharing will generate visible issues and compliance questions much faster than before.
Analysis
Copilot will turn your existing permission mess into daily user complaints as people query and find documents they should never see. Treat this as a hard deadline to clean up before it becomes a support nightmare. Export the external sharing report from the SharePoint admin center today and revoke guest access on your top active libraries first.
Citation
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