Due to the increased and still increasing number of people working from home the requirement to keep users’ identities and devices secure and up-to-date is a must. Recently, I wrote some blog posts on Microsoft 365 communication and collaboration security. This time, I’d like to share what Google provides to secure its G Suite platform for communication and collaboration on an high level.

Basically, it doesn’t matter what kind of solution and service you provide, it must be secure by design to cope with more and more advanced threats for your company assets and user identities. To do so, you need to be alert, but not only just maintain your as-is security standards and architecture, no, moreover you must steadily enhance the security capabilities as there are always new threats on the rise.

To keep your company assets secure if you rely on G Suite you might want to know what you can do.

• Fundamental device management
  • Reports/view all devices which access corporate data
  • Reports on devices accessing corporate data
  • Remediation actions, e.g. remotely sign out a user
  • Context-aware access control, e.g. allow access to corporate data/services only under defined circumstances like only device storage must be encrypted etc.
• Enhanced security for Windows 10
  • login with Google credentials because Google can be used as a credential provider for Windows
  • Single Sign-On (SSO) for Windows 10 devices, apps and services
  • identity and account protection (detection of anti-hijacking, suspicious login detection)
  • compliance checks for Windows 10 devices (checking if the device is secured and updated)
  • device management to roll out device configuration updates and wipe a device
• New G suite security capabilities
  • data protection insights [for data loss prevention (DLP)]
  • automated classification with labels for DLP
  • iOS copy/paste protection for DLP
  • context-aware access with group-based policies
  • context-aware access for SAML apps
  • monitor logs with third-party monitoring

Conclusion, opinion and summary

I must admit that I haven’t checked for some time what’s new and which capabilities are offered lately with G Suite. By what I’ve read so far, a lot has changed and was added for good. I recognize that the features and capabilities regarding communication and collaboration security have been growing very well, too. It’s interesting to see how G Suite also evolves over time regarding communication and collaboration security, to keep users and things secure.

Additional resources

• 6 new device, data, and user controls to help G Suite customers stay secure
• Fundamental device management brings basic coverage to all desktop computers
• Enhanced security for Windows 10 devices now generally available
• Dynamic, context-aware access control for G Suite now generally available
• Google Credential Provider for Windows
• Data protection insights
• Automated classification
• iOS copy/paste protection
• Context-aware access
• Google BeyondCorp
• Work from home checklist