The 6 biggest security and privacy updates from Google Workspace –...

The Google Cloud renaming G Suite to Google Workspace, announced last week, includes new security and privacy updates that help prevent malicious behavior and protect corporate data while using the productivity and collaboration tools.

The new security features for Workspace, which include Gmail and the tools Google Calendar, Meet, Chat, Drive, Documents, Sheets, Slides, Forms, and Websites, are designed to facilitate secure communication and give system administrators more visibility and control, according to Karthik of Product Management at Google Workspace.

“With our security features, you can create flexible workspaces that can be scaled regardless of the device or browser used,” Lakshminarayanan said in a blog post today. “At the same time, we want to ensure that security does not hinder you in achieving your goals, but rather helps you to protect the data that is so important for your company.

New meet security functions

Google Cloud will add features such as new classification, audit logging and detection capabilities aimed at combating abuse in Google Meet, the real-time meeting tool. These features will be added in the coming weeks, according to Lakshminarayanan.

“To prevent abusive users from disrupting your meetings, we classify users who have been flagged as abusive and banned from previous meetings and prevent similar users from attending your meetings in the future,” he said.

With the new features, Meet can automatically detect abusive display names or codes and then prevent those users from joining.

System administrators can access audit logs of instances when their users report abuse in Meet so that they can investigate the sources.

Chat security updates

So that abusive users don’t disturb meetings in Google Chat, Google Cloud will make security functions generally available in the coming weeks to support administrators in monitoring and managing their use.

New audit logs enable them to stay up to date on and target potentially malicious behavior that could include phishing or data infiltration in chat.

“We also classify spam or abusive chat rooms as such to make sure your users aren’t added to those rooms,” said Lakshminarayanan. “For a holistic view of the actions being taken on Google Workspace products, administrators can view logs of chat, meet, groups, calendar, and voice in the security center investigation tool.”

The security center is included in the Google Workspace Enterprise Edition.

Gmail security insights

Google Cloud increases administrators’ visibility of data security issues to help them protect their company’s data.

Last month, Gmail audit logs became widely available so administrators can see when users turn on auto-forwarding of email outside of their domain and take action to avoid potential data loss due to a policy violation, malicious insider, or hijacking Prevent accounts.

Now, next week, Google Cloud will be providing privacy insights related to general availability next week to proactively generate reports that allow administrators to understand sensitive information – including sensitive data types and Google Drive files with sensitive content – stored in their organization are.

“These insights will help you respond to your visibility and provide information that you can use to make more informed decisions about protecting your company’s data,” said Lakshminarayanan.

Google creates the custom reports by running proactive data loss scans on all Drive files based on a set of 50 pre-defined content detectors.

Revised rules page

According to Google Cloud, the rules page in the Google Workspace admin console is being redesigned to centralize the discovery, creation, and management of rules for Google-provided rules and custom rules.

“As part of this redesign, we’re also bringing activity, data protection, device management, reporting, and system-defined rules together to consolidate security rules into a single experience for greater visibility and convenience,” said Lakshminarayanan.

Google Cloud also generally publishes customizable templates that administrators can use to quickly create and set up rules based on best practices.

“These enhancements build on our recent improvements, including new time series graphs that show the history of rule log events for privacy rules (now in alpha) and improvements to speed up triage with personality cards in the Alert Center (now generally available),” said Lakshminarayanan said.

ISO / IEC 27701 certification

Google Workspace is the first major productivity suite to achieve ISO / IEC 27701 accredited certification as a data processor, Google Cloud announced today.

ISO / IEC 27701, published in 2019 by the International Organization for Standardization, is a global standard designed to help organizations comply with international data protection frameworks and laws governing the collection and processing of personal data.

“It provides guidelines for the implementation, maintenance and continuous improvement of a data protection information management system and can be used by both data controllers and processors – an important consideration for organizations that need to be guided by the GDPR (Europe) General Data Protection Regulation), ” Sagte Lakshminarayanan.

The accredited ISO / IEC 27701 certification offers Google Workspace customers advantages such as simplified review processes, universal data protection controls and more clarity with regard to data protection-related roles and responsibilities.

In June, Google Cloud announced that it was the first major cloud provider to receive ISO / IEC 27701 certification for Google Cloud Platform as a data processor.

Google Vault-Updates

Google Cloud is about to release a redesigned user interface for Google Vault that enables data retention and eDiscovery in Google Workspace Business and Enterprise editions.

The updated user interface includes workflow improvements such as text filters and content navigation in the side panel that are designed for faster content reviews.

Google Cloud will also add support for Google Voice data to the Google Workspace services covered in Google Vault. The move allows you to find, save and store certain Google Voice data.

This article originally appeared on crn.com