I'm CISSP, computer science dude. I can hack your computer, steal your credit card numbers and social engineer you all day long. So when I say SharePoint is not secure, I mean it. Case in point:
- PROOF #1 - Any DBA can dump the contents of your content database by default in 2007 AND 2010. Reference this blog post: http://bit.ly/3pdf45
- PROOF #2 - Web Application policy can be setup to give "Full Control" to anyone the Central Administrator decides to (including him or herself)
- PROOF #3 - Site Collection Admins are "God" when it comes to the data in the Site Collection
- PROOF #4 - Development = Production odds are less than 5% (once you give the developers the database backup, that's it, they own the content)
- PROOF #5 - Ignorance kills your SharePoint - Removing certain blocked file types can cause security holes. Reference this blog post: http://bit.ly/3GpJkp
- PROOF #6 - Blind public deployments of SharePoint to the internet (the _vti_bin problem). Reference this blog post: http://bit.ly/3RjJVD
Are these bad things, technically no if you trust the people you have assigned to each role. But keep in mind, social engineering is a powerful foe!
How does You/I/SharePoint 2007/2010 fix this?
- FIX #1 - 2007/2010 - Implement IRM/DRM - this encrypts your files and locks them down no matter where they will go (covered in my 50149 operations course)
- Search has to be setup to have read access across the IRM domain
- FIX #2 - 2007/2010 - Implement custom actions or event receivers to encrypt the documents when they are "added", "checked in", decrypt on "check out" (covered in my 50064 course)
- Prevents SQL DBA's from PROOF #1
- Problem is, you lose functionality (workflows are "Added", which means the files are encrypted - DOH!, search can't index your content)
- FIX #3 - 2010 only - implement an encryption RBS (watch for this in my future courses)
- Things are awesome, content is encrypted in data store, Search is setup with Read permissions through SharePoint - LIFE IS GOOD, until someone (like me) social engineers your IW staff to give me what I want
- FIX #4 - build some kind of scrub routine on your content database before you give it to your developers
- Hard to do given the structure of the content database, but possible if everything is tagged with content types/meta data (easier to do in SP2010)
- FIX #5 - Don't remove things from blocked file types unless you really know what you are doing!
- FIX #6 - Don't blindly deploy your internet website using SharePoint, reduce your hacker footprint as much as possible!
In reality, there is no security in this world. Sorry...am I fair to pick on SharePoint, no, no matter what platform you choose, same issues will exist!
Chris