SearchUnify and Security: Implement Access Control on Search Results

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SearchUnify provides organizations four ways in which they can prevent unauthorized access to content through search. Let's start with the most effective option.

Copy Access Control Settings to Search Results with Okta

This is the most secure method if you have a large team accessing information from multiple content sources. Okta is a popular identity management software and is supported in SearchUnify out-of-the-box. The instructions to set it up are on Use an Identity Management Software (SSO Sign-In) to Log into SearchUnify.

Create Several Content Source – Search Client Groups

This is a low-tech way to secure information but it's quicker and works as well as Okta when only a handful of teams using separate content sources are involved. A SearchUnify admin can create a search client for each team and connect each search client with only those content sources that its users need. In an organization of two teams, one search client can be connected with Salesforce and YouTube for support reps and another search client can be linked with Jira for managers.

Remove Documents from an Index

Another quick but low-tech way is to manually remove a handful of documents from the index of a search client so that those documents become unsearchable. The only downside of manual removal is that admins have to remove them after each crawl. If your index isn't updated frequently, you might want to check out the article on Total Documents.

Create Access Control Settings Based on Content Field Values

More complex than the previous two, but entirely worth your time if you don't use an identity management software and want something more advanced than Total Documents and a dedicated search client for each time. In Search Clients > Edit > Content Sources > Create Formula, admin can select content fields, such as tags and URLs, and remove from search results the documents with certain content field values. For instance, the docs tagged "internal" or "archived". The instructions to use are on Create Formula.