Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Unleashed

Isolating SharePoint Through Deployment of Separate Sites or Site Collections

Granting various groups of users access to SharePoint content by organizing them into sites is a more secure approach to SharePoint design. Users are limited in the types of access they receive to other sites, and searching can be limited to specific information. Administrative overhead is increased in this example, however, as separate groups of users and permissions need to be maintained. It is also more difficult to manage because all sites must use the same content database, reducing the scalability of the system.

Deploying users into separate site collections goes even further down the path of security and scalability. Separate site collections can be more easily ...