OneDrive Security: 6 new features that will greatly enhance protection

Microsoft OneDrive Event unveiled a lot of new features coming to OneDrive. Between its new redesigned look, Copilot coming to OneDrive, and the improved search, that will allow users to find files and photos using natural languages, the Redmond-based tech giant is also bringing new security features to OneDrive.

This is understandable given just how vulnerable Microsoft apps are when it comes to cyberattacks. For example, 80% of Microsoft 365 accounts were hacked in 2022, with 60% of them being successful.

And if we take into account the fact that most of the Microsoft apps, especially Microsoft Teams, which OneDrive is often used in conjunction with, are prone to modern malware attacks, these security features are a must.

Microsoft doesn’t hold back. It brings no less than 6 new features that will greatly enhance protection, especially when it comes to file sharing. Check them out below.

OneDrive new security features

According to Microsoft, each of these security features is currently available to customers worldwide, unless specified.

• Granular conditional access policies: You may want to fine-tune the access requirements for people who use confidential files so that they don’t accidentally access and leak sensitive information. For example, if a person often works with confidential files, you can now add multi-factor authentication to the site to impact only that person’s access requirements. 
• Restricted access control: As users share files, they give others inside and outside of your organization access to those files. The restricted access control policy for OneDrive lets you block people from accessing shared files in specific OneDrive accounts by limiting OneDrive access to members of a specific security group. For example, if you discover that people have access to certain confidential files you can fine-tune the access so that only users in a specified security group have access. 
• Moving OneDrive accounts across tenants: Mergers, acquisitions, and divestitures are a fact of life, and many organizations go through them. In these scenarios, you may have a need to move OneDrive accounts from one tenant to another. Now with cross-tenant OneDrive migration, you can easily move OneDrive accounts across tenants and all existing sharing links will continue to work with the redirect feature. 
• Block download policy: As a SharePoint administrator or a Global administrator in Microsoft 365, you can block the download of files and Teams meeting recordings from SharePoint sites or OneDrive. This feature can be set for individual sites, but not at the organization level. When enabled users will have browser-only access with no ability to download, print, or sync files.
• Collaboration insights: External collaboration is the main source of data leakage due to accidental sharing. Now you can identify user-centric collaboration and sharing patterns across your organization. This capability is currently in private preview, register for more information.
• Data export for OneDrive sync client admin reports: For data-driven admins, we’re excited to announce that sync admin reports on volume, health, errors, and more will be available as part of Microsoft Graph Data Connect for SharePoint. Once the data is available in Azure, admins can analyze, visualize, and report on this data in a flexible way using Azure data tools like Azure Synapse and Power BI. Microsoft will release this feature to public preview by January 2024.