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Have you have ever been concerned about activity in your workspace attributed to “Guest Reader” or “Guest Contributor”? This is what shows up when a user who is not logged in interacts with your workspace when certain “public” options have been enabled. Here I will discuss where these options can be found and how to disable them to fully secure your workspace.

There are 2 areas in the Manage section to look at: Public Access and Public Files.

Public Access

The public access section has options to make your entire workspace publicly accessible. This is always disabled by default (unless you are creating a send or receive hub), but can be enabled by Authors and Administrators. This means that users will not be required to have an account and be logged in to view the workspace.

The URL to get to your workspace is not exposed, so nobody (beyond someone with a very clever guess) will be able to gain access unless they have been provided a link or told where to go.

If this is enabled in your workspace, just uncheck “Make Workspace Public” and save to require a login and password to gain access.

Public Files

Public files allows you to make certain files downloadable without having to log into the workspace. They can be downloaded using the short URL found under the details page of a particular file. While the ability to make files public is enabled by default, individual files are not enabled to be publicly available by default. Files can be made public by Authors and Administrators in your workspace.

The public files area in the manage section allows you to globally set whether files can be made public, and also provides a list of files that are currently public. You can disable this globally to secure all files (and hide the option to make a file public) by clicking “Disable Public Files”. Individual files can be disabled by clicking the red “X” next to them in the public files list.