Unauthenticated access to shared dashboards via public URLs

Question

Datadog allows dashboards to be shared using a public URL, enabling users to view metrics and visualizations without authenticating into the platform. While this facilitates external reporting, it introduces a risk where sensitive metric names, host tags, or infrastructure data are exposed to anyone possessing the link.

Organization administrators can mitigate this by disabling the Public Sharing toggle within Organization Settings. However, there is uncertainty regarding the lifecycle of links generated before a global policy change is implemented and whether these links remain active or are immediately invalidated upon disabling the feature.

Does disabling the global public sharing setting retroactively revoke access to all previously generated public dashboard URLs?
  Is there a mechanism to audit all currently active public links across an organization without manually checking every dashboard?

Tasadduq Burney · Answer

Direct answers
No. Disabling the Organization Settings Public Sharing toggle does not retroactively revoke existing public dashboard URLs.
No native single-pane inventory exists for all active public links. Active shares can be found by enumerating dashboards via the Datadog API and by querying Audit Logs for share events.

Confirmed facts

The Organization Settings > Dashboards > Public Sharing toggle controls creation and UI visibility. With the toggle off, users cannot create new public shares and the share controls are hidden in the UI.
The toggle is a creation guard. It does not automatically invalidate share URLs that were already generated.
Revocation of a public dashboard is per-dashboard, performed by the dashboard owner or an admin via the dashboard Share settings or API.

Likely explanation
Public dashboard URLs generated before the toggle is disabled typically remain accessible until the individual dashboard’s public sharing is revoked or the dashboard is deleted. The global policy change stops new shares and hides the UI, but existing share flags and URLs persist on the dashboards where sharing was enabled.
This behavior is plan and product-version sensitive and can change. Audit Logs have retention limits and may not provide a complete historical view of all shares created. Public URLs may also remain briefly accessible via browser or CDN caches after revocation until cache expires.

Containment steps for this case

Disable Public Sharing in Organization Settings to stop new shares and hide share UI.
Enumerate dashboards and identify active public shares:

List dashboards via the Datadog API and inspect the public sharing attribute and share URL.
Query Audit Logs for dashboard.share.create, dashboard.share.update and dashboard.share.delete events to identify which dashboards have active shares and when they were changed.

Revoke sharing per dashboard where public access is no longer desired via the dashboard Share settings or API.
Verify:

Organization Settings toggle is off and share UI is hidden for non-admin users.
API enumeration shows no dashboards with public sharing enabled.
A known previously shared URL returns access denied when tested from an incognito session.

One diagnostic detail that changes the recommendation: Do you have Audit Logs enabled with retention covering the period when public shares were created? If not, API enumeration is the only reliable current inventory method.

Unauthenticated access to shared dashboards via public URLs

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Direct answers

Confirmed facts

Likely explanation

Containment steps for this case

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