Security Update for Google Drive Will Wreck Your Older Shared Links

  • Sam Delton
  • 24 Jun 2021
Security Update for Google Drive Will Wreck Your Older Shared Links

Google is introducing some new security features — while being (somewhat) honest about the inconveniences this may cause. 

The security update, scheduled for September 13 of the current year, brings more protection to sharing the files uploaded to Google Drive. This will be achieved by adding a resource key to the links.  However, on Wednesday, the company’s officials began to email warnings to Google Workspace. The update will change the links of "some" files that Google Drive users had already shared. That means the affected files will require "new access requests." This information has since been confirmed in Google Workspace’s official blog. 

Think about it like that: say, last year, you shared a link for a Knowledge Base folder with your colleagues via Google Drive. For a year, they were using it with no hassle. And now the said link has been changed by Google, making the folder inaccessible. Your colleagues begin bombarding you with access requests. A situation like this will be even more hectic for larger organizations with cloud storage-based ecosystems.  

However, Google is also attempting to minimize the expected damage, promising to send notifications about the affected files. Admins will be offered to choose whether to apply the new security update for their respective organizations. 

The expected changes will impact shared Google Drive drives, users, folders, and files. The alerts will start rolling out at the end of July. So don’t miss those to make sure your possibly broken links are quickly mended.