UAE Cyber Security Council Warns 25% of Public Files Expose Sensitive Personal Data

The UAE Cyber Security Council (CSC) has issued a pointed warning to organisations and individuals across the Emirates: approximately one in four publicly accessible files contains sensitive personal data — a figure that signals a systemic gap in how enterprises and users manage digital information.

The advisory, released as part of the CSC's ongoing Cyber Pulse awareness campaign, arrives at a moment when cloud adoption across the GCC is accelerating faster than the security behaviours needed to support it. For enterprise security teams, the numbers carry immediate operational weight.

The Hidden Risk in Everyday File Sharing

Beyond the headline figure on public files, the CSC's data reveals a deeper structural problem: between 68% and 77% of files shared through private links may still be accessible to users who were never intended to view them. The implication is significant — cloud storage platforms create an illusion of controlled access that does not always reflect reality.

This is a challenge that cuts across industries. In sectors handling regulated data — financial services, healthcare, legal, and government contracting — unintended file exposure can trigger compliance failures under frameworks such as the UAE Personal Data Protection Law (PDPL) and, for organisations with European counterparties, GDPR obligations.

The risk is compounded when employees share files using default platform settings — settings that often prioritise convenience over access restriction. A file shared via a public link for a single recipient can, in practice, be indexed, forwarded, or accessed by anyone with the URL.

What the CSC Is Recommending

The Council's guidance translates into a set of concrete controls that enterprise IT and security teams should be actively enforcing rather than treating as individual user responsibility:

Encryption at rest and in transit remains the foundational control for any file containing personally identifiable information or commercially sensitive material. Encryption does not prevent sharing errors, but it ensures that improperly accessed files cannot be read without the appropriate key.

Strong authentication and two-factor verification on cloud platforms reduce the risk that compromised credentials result in bulk file exposure. For enterprise environments, this means enforcing MFA at the platform level rather than leaving it as an optional user setting.

Access permission audits conducted on a regular cadence are essential. Files shared months or years ago under previous access configurations — with former employees, contractors, or partners — represent a persistent exposure surface that many organisations never revisit.

Avoiding public links for sensitive content is a behavioural control that requires active policy enforcement. Many cloud platforms default to generating shareable public URLs; enterprise policy should require expiring, authenticated links for any file classified above a defined sensitivity threshold.

Secure networks and updated systems round out the baseline — ensuring that file access itself occurs over protected channels and that the platforms in use are patched against known vulnerabilities.

Why This Matters for GCC Enterprises Right Now

The CSC's warning is timely against a backdrop of rising cloud adoption and increasingly sophisticated data harvesting techniques across the region. As GCC organisations deepen their reliance on AI-driven platforms and cloud infrastructure, the volume of sensitive data moving through shared cloud environments is growing — and the attack surface with it.

Threat actors targeting the region have demonstrated consistent interest in data exfiltration over destructive attacks. Files left publicly accessible or shared without expiry controls are low-effort targets that require no sophisticated exploitation — they are, in effect, open doors.

For CISOs and IT leaders operating in the UAE and broader GCC, this advisory is a prompt to revisit cloud data governance policies, run access permission audits across shared drives, and ensure that file-sharing behaviour across the organisation is governed by policy rather than individual judgment.

The CSC's Cyber Pulse campaign continues to provide weekly guidance for organisations navigating the UAE's digital security landscape. Enterprise teams looking to benchmark their cloud security posture against regional compliance standards can also reference the UAE Information Assurance Standards published by the Council.