GROUP-005: Group conversation visibility defaults to members (GWS.GROUPS.3.1)
- Platform
- Google Workspace
- Category
- Collaboration
- Severity
- Low
- Zero Trust pillar
- Data (weight 2)
- Golden fixtures
- 3
- Branch coverage
- Observed: fixtures prove the verdicts they exercise
- Provenance
- baseline
What it checks
SCuBA GWS.GROUPS.3.1 requires that the default permission for viewing group conversations be restricted to group members rather than the whole domain or the public. Overly-open conversation visibility exposes discussion archives — which can contain sensitive student and staff information. This check reads viewTopicsDefaultAccessLevel from the groups_for_business.groups_sharing policy and warns where the default is broader than group members.
Recommended value
Default conversation view access set to GROUP_MEMBERS
Remediation
In Groups for Business settings, set the default 'who can view conversations' permission to group members.
Fixture-proven verdicts
Every verdict below is proven by a golden fixture in the module's gating test suite. This table derives from the last green run; it cannot be edited by hand.
| Scenario | Expected verdict |
|---|---|
| clean | PASS |
| not-assessed | Not Assessed |
| warn | WARN |
Framework mappings
- CISA SCuBA
- GWS.GROUPS.3.1v1
- NIST SP 800-53
- AC-3, AC-22