Publish to web

[sajarac]

Hi there,

I hope someone can point me in the right direction and provide the best answer as possible.

Currently I am having some difficult time with my company administrators, they don't want to have enabled the option "Publish to web" bevause they consider that is a security risk, company information can be exposed.

Is this true/right?, what I am doing is trying to share my report with my people in my area vis URL, I know that the link is not secure if somebody forward the same link to an un authorized person but that is not our case, in fact I am not sharing sensitive information just company statistics.

I think that to minimize the risk every month I can change the file and generate a new URL and then distribute.

Anyway the question is simple what are the risks sharing powerbi reports in this way? Is not it the same as having public files on onedrive and sharing them?

Thanks in advance for any response.

Regards,

[GilbertQ]

Hi there

I would say that your company has gone about it the right way.

I know that I can search via Google or Bing and find Publish to Web URL's that have data. And if someone happened to forward that URL on, anyone could view the data, which is a big risk for a company.

What I would suggest is rather using the Secure Embed Option which means that the user has to log in to see the reports, more details can be found here: https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/easily-embed-secure-power-bi-reports-in-your-internal-porta...

[sajarac]

Thank you very much for your prompt reply.

However by doing this option all of the users need a PowerBI PRO licenses, right? What about if I want to distribute my reports with the people on the shop floor, none of them have even an account? That is why the option publish to web is faster and no additional cost involved.

[GilbertQ · Accepted solution]

Hi there

Yes that is correct in that they would need a Power BI Pro license.

It can be done via Publish to web, but as explained before there could potentially be security concerns if that data had to get into other people's hands.

Another option would be Power BI Embedded, where they would log into a custom application, and you could then show them the reports. When using Power BI Embedded, you pay for capacity and not for users.

https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi-embedded/