# Before Copilot: who can see what? > Copilot does not bypass permissions, but it finds everything they allow. Where oversharing comes from, which tools find it and where to start. - Author: Jami Susijärvi, Oy Wolflake Consulting Ab - Published: 2026-10-12 - Web page: https://wolflake.fi/en/blog/copilot-oversharing Imagine someone typing into Copilot in their first week: "What has the management team decided recently?" Or: "Can you find the salary table?" In most environments Copilot replies that it has no access to anything like that. In a surprising number, it answers the question. Copilot has not broken into anything. It has simply found something the user has had access to for years, but which nobody ever went looking for. ## Copilot does not bypass permissions, it finds them This is the most important sentence in the whole topic, and Microsoft says it plainly: Copilot [only surfaces content the user has at least view permissions to](https://learn.microsoft.com/microsoft-365/copilot/microsoft-365-copilot-privacy). It sees nothing the user could not see themselves. So the problem is not Copilot. The problem is that permissions have spread far wider over the years than anyone intended, and what has protected them is mostly the fact that nobody knew how to look. A file shared with the whole organisation but buried three subfolders deep on an old project site was hidden in practice. For Copilot it is one question away. This is not a reason to leave Copilot undeployed. It is a reason to review sharing before it is deployed. ## Where oversharing comes from Oversharing rarely comes from carelessness. It comes from sharing being easy and restricting taking effort. The starting point is that [SharePoint's sharing settings default to the most permissive option](https://learn.microsoft.com/sharepoint/get-ready-copilot-sharepoint-advanced-management). If nobody has changed them since the tenant was set up, everything else follows from that. There are several common sources, and a typical environment has many of them at once: **Links that open a file to everyone.** "Anyone with the link" or "People in your organisation". The link was created for one person at the time, but it works for anyone, and it is still valid. **"Everyone except external users".** A built-in SharePoint group that automatically includes every user in the organisation. When it is added to a site's or folder's permissions, the content is visible to the whole company. **Public Teams and groups.** The team was created as public because it seemed easiest or because the difference was never considered. The team's files are then readable by everyone. **Broken permission inheritance.** A folder's permissions were changed separately at some point, and nobody remembers why or for whom. **Ownerless and abandoned sites.** The project ended, the owner left, the site stayed. Nobody is responsible for who can get in. ## Microsoft's tools for this There is a toolset for this that many have never heard of: SharePoint Advanced Management. Bought separately it is an expensive add-on, which is why few have it. What many do not know is that [a single Copilot licence in the tenant](https://learn.microsoft.com/sharepoint/sharepoint-advanced-management-features-copilot-license) unlocks most of its features for the whole environment. Microsoft's documentation does not say outright whether this also applies to the cheaper Copilot Business aimed at small businesses, so I tested it in my own tenant. Once a single user had a Copilot Business licence assigned, the Advanced management section in the SharePoint admin center became active in under a day, with no separate SAM licence. The site-level restrictions described below became available too. The most useful parts for oversharing: **Data access governance reports** show where there are Anyone links, organisation-wide links and "Everyone except external users" permissions. This is the starting point: first you need to know where the problem is. **Site access review** hands a finding to the site owner to check. The administrator does not know who should have access to the sales site. The head of sales does. **Restricted Content Discovery** (Restrict content discovery in the admin center) hides a site from Copilot and organisation-wide search without changing permissions. This is the most practical tool when there is no time to clean up yet but Copilot is wanted now. RCD is not a security boundary, though. It stops Copilot from finding content on its own, but it removes nobody's permissions: a user who has access to a file can still open it and hand it to Copilot. It works as an interim step, not as a replacement for cleaning up permissions. **Restricted Access Control** (Restricted site access in the admin center) limits a site to named groups only, even if someone else has a link to it or an old permission. One warning about older guidance. Many Copilot rollout guides still recommend Restricted SharePoint Search, which limits search to specific sites. It was always meant as a temporary measure, and [Microsoft is retiring it](https://learn.microsoft.com/sharepoint/restricted-sharepoint-search). New enablement has been blocked since July 2026. The replacement is Restricted Content Discovery. ## Sensitivity labels The other approach is to mark sensitive files with sensitivity labels. Copilot respects them: if a label's encryption does not give the user the right to extract content, [Copilot does not summarise the file](https://learn.microsoft.com/microsoft-365/copilot/microsoft-365-copilot-architecture-data-protection-auditing) but only links to it. Content Copilot produces also inherits the highest-priority label of its sources. Business Premium includes labels, but they are applied by hand. Automatic labelling, and a DLP rule that stops Copilot from processing labelled files entirely, require E5-level licensing. In a smaller environment manually applied labels are a good start, as long as they go where they matter. ## Do not let perfect block good The same principle as with [multi-factor authentication](https://wolflake.fi/en/blog/why-mfa-is-not-enough): if not everything can be cleaned up before rollout, that is no reason to clean up nothing. Nor is it a reason to postpone Copilot by a year. Years of accumulated sharing will not be fixed in a week, and it does not have to be. What matters is knowing where the most sensitive material is and securing that first. HR, salaries, finance, board and management team material, customer contracts. Once those are in order, the rest can be worked through in stages, and Restricted Content Discovery covers the interim for the sites not yet reached. ## Where to start The first step is the tenant-level defaults. Restrict Anyone links or remove them entirely, and change the default link to specific people only. This does not fix old sharing, but it stops new cases from appearing. Then the sensitive sites. Find them, check their permissions and remove "Everyone except external users" wherever it does not belong. Then the reports and a staged review of the rest of the environment, with site owners checking their own sites. ## Checklist - **Change the tenant's default sharing settings.** Restrict Anyone links and set the default link to specific people. - **Look for wide sharing.** Anyone and organisation-wide links, "Everyone except external users" permissions and public Teams are the most common reasons content is visible to the whole company. - **Identify the most sensitive material and start there.** HR, salaries, finance, board and management team first. - **Hide unfinished sites from Copilot.** Restricted Content Discovery buys time to clean up without holding back the rollout. - **Do not enable Restricted SharePoint Search.** It is being retired. - **Let site owners check their own sites.** They know who should see what. - **Do not wait for perfect.** Most sensitive first, the rest in stages. Copilot makes visible what has been open all along. That is actually a good thing, because the same oversharing existed before Copilot too, and anyone who got hold of an account could have exploited it. Sharing settings and public groups are reviewed in the [health check](https://wolflake.fi/en/health-check). It is worth doing before buying Copilot rather than after.