External User Access in SharePoint Online

• SharePoint Online permits organizations to easily share content with off-site partners without additional licenses.
• Since external sharing could increase the risk of sensitive content leakage, customers should have a comprehensive plan in place to manage the feature.
• Allowing sharing directly from SharePoint Online could lessen the risk of workers putting internal content on other sharing systems out of view of administrators.

SharePoint Online supports several types of participation by external users without requiring the purchase or assignment of additional licenses. External sharing can help organizations work with off-site contractors, vendors, and other business partners to maintain sites, documents, and libraries without purchasing additional licenses. Licensed users on different Microsoft 365 tenancies within an organization can also be granted access to resources through external sharing, and sharing can be configured to allow anonymous sharing via link. Organizations should plan guest access policies carefully before implementing them, paying attention to data security, compliance, and manageability and reporting features that could require the purchase of additional Microsoft services.