TL;DR: Sharing documents with external users is essential to many business processes. But it is often a risky, slow, and fragmented operation. Done right, external portals provide a secure, branded, and organized way to exchange files. They can offer a simple experience to providers and partners while ensuring traceability and version control.
External sharing is one of the main drivers of shadow IT. Organizations may have secure, well-governed document management systems in place. But receiving and sending files to people outside the organization often becomes a weak link in the security chain. When a document needs to be shared with a partner or supplier, it is frequently duplicated and uploaded to an unofficial cloud-based file-sharing tool.
More than two-thirds of software purchases are done by departments and individuals without IT security being in the loop. When this happens outside established controls and visibility, risks can quickly add up. 75% of IT professionals identify compromised company data as resulting from the deployment of unapproved technologies. And a third of successful cyberattacks are carried out on data stored in shadow IT infrastructure from shadow IT, Gartner estimated in a 2020 report.
Sometimes, industry experts’ nightmare scenarios translate into serious real-world breaches. Air France-KLM, for example, admitted that a major leak of clients’ personal data occurred on a third-party service used to handle customer requests. Name, contact details, loyalty program numbers, and even subject lines from support emails were among the sensitive details accidentally revealed, the airlines announced in August 2025.
Some of the world’s biggest brands, from luxury retailers like Dior, Cartier, and Chanel to insurer Allianz and retailer Marks & Spencer, have reported similar incidents.
So what can organizations do to protect their reputation, customer relations, and regulatory status? The first step is identifying the underlying problem.
The legacy problem: internal or external collaboration?
Most document management and collaboration tools were built years ago, with internal teams top of mind.
But they were not built for frequent, fast, and structured collaboration with external users. Exchanging documents outside the company typically requires custom development, parallel tools, or manual processes layered on top of the core system.
So when information needs to move outside the organization, teams are left to improvise. Files are emailed back and forth between a DMS and an external sharing tool. Shared drives are opened more widely than intended, and access is granted on a temporary basis that often becomes permanent.
What happens when the single source of truth goes missing?
Over time, these workarounds pile up. Documents get duplicated or lost, versions drift, and it becomes difficult to understand who has access to what. While revoking access is hard, monitoring activity can be even harder.
Can IT security managers be sure their colleagues aren’t exchanging sensitive data via a WhatsApp group because “it’s faster than Teams/Slack”? Are organizations capable of tracking individual team members who get their own ‘pro’ subscriptions for Dropbox, WeTransfer, or Box instead of using authorized enterprise tools?
As a result, organizations end up with fragmented workflows and disconnected information sources. External exchanges happen in shadow channels outside governance frameworks, where visibility is limited. Teams are forced to choose between speed and control. Over time, this fragmentation adds operational complexity and increases risk rather than reducing it.
The single source of truth, so essential to business operations, is wiped out by the noise.
And when compliance or audit questions arise, there is little reliable traceability to fall back on.
In short: a risky mess.
What are external portals good for?
An external portal provides a dedicated, secure space for document-based collaboration with people outside your organization without exposing internal systems.
Done right, external portals offer a few distinct benefits.
On one hand, they allow organizations to request specific documents from external users, share individual files without opening access to entire repositories or sensitive folders, and track progress and status of submissions -all in one place.
They are also essential to maintaining a clear audit trail of every interaction.
Beyond that, portals allow companies to showcase their logo and typical colours, providing a clear on-brand experience for partners and providers. Add to that specific usage instructions, and you limit the risk of down- or uolaoding the wrong content.
For external users, the experience should be simple and intuitive: upload, download, and follow progress. No training, internal accounts, messy folders, or other sources of friction interfere with the process.
Where external portals create the most value
External portals are especially useful for processes that involve both critical and sensitive documents, such as procurement and vendor onboarding, financial services and insurance, healthcare, HR and recruitment, and research or public sector submissions.
In all of these scenarios, the goal is the same: make it easy for external users to participate while maintaining internal security, control, and compliance standards.
What to look for in an external portal
Not all external portals offer the same benefits and features.
When evaluating options, organizations should first look for external portals that are natively integrated with their main document management platform.
With that, you avoid having documents pop up in two disconnected systems, build granular document-level access controls, achieve full visibility into external activity, and ensure compliance-ready audit trails.
At the same time, a branded, mobile-friendly experience for external users and native integration with internal document workflows are key to ease of use and seamless integration.
The right portal shouldn’t feel like an add-on. It should be a natural, safe, and simple extension of how your organization already manages documents.
Exploring your options
As organizations rethink how documents move across their boundaries, external portals are becoming a foundational capability rather than a nice-to-have.
Solutions like AODocs External Portals are designed to support these use cases by enabling secure, controlled collaboration with external users while keeping documents governed inside the organization.
For teams struggling with fragmented tools or legacy systems, it’s an option worth exploring.
The key takeaway is simple: external collaboration shouldn’t mean giving up control. With the right external portal in place, it means tight governance and modern collaboration are both well-served.
For more, read on this knowledge base article:
What are portals
