| The process of managing security is a combination of ongoing monitoring and maintenance of security settings and system logs, combined with periodic review of overall security configuration. This helps to ensure that all security needs are being properly fulfilled and no abhorrent system activity is occurring. The processes you use to monitor and maintain security within your environment are vital in maintaining overall security integrity. Ongoing Maintenance There are a number of security practices which you should use to maintain the security of your SharePoint Portal Server on an ongoing basis. Since security is configured largely at the file-level, there are a few basic things to check on a regular basis to ensure that security is being properly maintained . Node Coordinators should periodically examine the security settings of the folders within the workspace. Ensure that high-level folders are accurately configured to reflect the intended security role assignments you have delegated to them. If node Coordinators also actively maintain subfolders within the workspace, examine them as well to ensure they are also properly configured. Folder Coordinators should closely monitor the role assignments for the folders they maintain on a regular basis, to ensure that no erroneous or inappropriate role assignments are made. Local server administrators should periodically examine server configuration settings, to ensure no unauthorized changes have been made and to update access credentials for outside content sources as needed. Server logs should be reviewed on a regular basis to identify any server errors or security warnings logged by the system. Test searches should be conducted on a regular basis to ensure that outside content is being successfully crawled, and that access credentials to those servers are still valid. TIP If the workspace will be primarily maintained by someone outside of the organization's traditional IT infrastructure, consider creating an administrative group assigned the Coordinator role at the workspace level. This group would allow easy monitoring and troubleshooting in the event that problems occur, and would more easily aid the people who administer the larger corporate environment in ensuring not only proper system configuration, but security settings as well. If more than one SharePoint Portal Server will be deployed within the organization, consider including this group at all servers.
Testing with Labs and Test Users Before implementing major changes to security settings within SharePoint Portal Server, it is often useful to validate those changes on test servers, or by using specifically created test accounts and groups to model the changes and ensure they will yield only the intended results. If lab testing is possible, configure your test servers to match your production system as closely as possible, and duplicate the workspace(s) from the production server. Once ready, apply your intended changes and monitor the system for any deviation from expected results. If lab testing is not an option, consider using collections of sample documents and specially created test user accounts that mimic those of actual users to simulate the informational elements of your production workspace. If your testing indicates behavior or results that were not deliberately sought by your changes, investigate the deviations and devise an alternative. Indexing Problems Document indexing occurs frequently within SharePoint Portal Server. With the workspace and any number of external content sources available for searching, it is important to perform test searches, using test accounts, to ensure that results do not return sensitive information. If users report problems in the index, or are being given search results including materials they should not be made aware of, use the following process to resolve the problem: Identify and correct the security configuration error resulting in the erroneous indexing. Reset the index and allow SharePoint Portal Server to completely re-index all of its content sources. Perform test searches to verify that the index has been fixed, and that no additional problems have been introduced by these changes. Perform a follow-up review of all external content sources crawled by the SharePoint Portal Server, and ensure that additional similar security configuration errors do not exist. | 
