How to find permission changes in SharePoint 2013 site collection

Introduction

SharePoint is gradually emerging as the most preferred collocation platform for enterprises. The greatest challenge to any collaboration platform is to ensure security without compromising the collaboration facilities. Access to SharePoint data is controlled by the permissions given to users. But what would happen if permissions can be changed without being noticed? Such a possibility should be avoided at any cost. That is why auditing permission changes becomes important in SharePoint. SharePoint has the facility to audit permission changes and there are alsosome specialized third-party SharePoint auditing solutions that can provide all the change details in a very simplified way.

Here are the steps to audit permission changes using SharePoint 2013 features:

• Enable Audit logging (Central Administration>Application Management>Manage service applications)

• Configure audit settings (Site settings>Site Collection Administration>Site collection audit settings)

• View audit logs (Site settings>Site Collection Administration>Audit log reports)

Step 1 :
Go to Central Administration>Application Management. Under Service Applications, click Manage service applications.

Step 2 :
Select the Secure Store Server Application, go to the tool bar and click Properties.

Step 3 :
Check the Audi log enabled check box; click OK.

Step 4 :
Click OK when the confirmation message is displayed.

Step 5 :
Click the Settings icon and then click Site Settings.

Step 6 :
Under Site Collection Administration, click Site collection audit settings.

Step 7 :
Now choose Editing users and permissions, and click OK.

Step 8 :
Now again go to Settings > Site Settings. Under Site Collection Administration, click the link Audit log reports.

Step 9 :
Under Security And Site Settings Reports, click the link Security Settings.

Step 10 :
Select the location to save the excel report using the Browse button; click OK.

Step 11 :
To get the auditing details, click the link Click here to view the report.

Conclusion :
By default, user permission changes are not enabled in SharePoint. After enabling audit logging, and configuring Site collection auditing setting, you can get the details of users and permissions changes on SharePoint audit log reports. For more simplified auditing, you can rely on specialized SharePoint auditing solutions.

by Satyendra Tiwari via Everyone's Blog Posts - SharePoint Community