Google has been focusing on security features lately, judging by the number of interventions it has made. It has already deployed an important safety feature for Gmail and now it is looking at the other Workspace products such as Drive to improve data security for its users. In an announcement, Google has highlighted its zero trust model for its Cloud services under which it will be bolstering the way data is kept, interacted with, and added to the system. To enhance the system, Google will be leveraging its AI capabilities.
Google stated in its blog post, “In security, the job is never done, which is why we’re unveiling new zero trust, digital sovereignty, and threat defense controls powered by Google AI to help organizations keep their data safe”. Some of the sensitive tasks on Gmail, Drive, and other Google products will now be automated by AI to stay ahead of security threats.
Highlighting the need for these enhancements, Google pointed towards a 38 percent rise in cybersecurity attacks in 2022, where each data breach cost the organization an average of $4.5 million, citing data from Check Point and IBM reports.
Google to bring AI-powered features to bolster security in Workspace
For this, Google has decided to improve its zero-trust model. For the unaware, the company defines this model as “a cloud security model designed to secure modern organizations by removing implicit trust and enforcing strict identity authentication and authorization. Under zero trust, every user, device, and component is considered untrusted at all times, regardless of whether they are inside or outside of an organization’s network”.
These capabilities will be provided to IT and security teams of organizations leveraging Workspace and will give them more granular controls over data use and access,
Some of these AI-powered zero-trust features are as follows:
- Google will use AI to automatically and continuously classify and label data in Google Drive to help ensure data is appropriately shared and protected from exfiltration.
- It will add DLP controls in Drive which will allow Workspace admins to set criteria such as device location or security status, that must be met in order for a user to be able to share sensitive content in Drive.
- It will also be extending these DLP controls to Gmail and will be available in preview later this year.
It should be noted that the DLP features are already present in Google Chat, Drive, and Chrome. These features are crucial to help security teams in controlling the sensitive data that flows in and out of an organization.
Additionally, Google has also announced new digital sovereignty features which are as follows:
- Preventing third-party access to sensitive data.
- Selecting the location of an organization’s encryption keys with their trusted partner in the country of their choice to simplify setup and support local regulatory compliance.
- Choosing where data is stored and processed. Organizations also have the option to store a copy of their Workspace data in a country of their choice.
- Enforcing regional support personnel access for troubleshooting purposes.
- Making 2-Step verification (2SV) mandatory for select enterprise administrators.
- Requiring multi-party approval for sensitive administrator actions.
- Protecting additional sensitive actions in Gmail.
- Exporting logs to Chronicle in just a few clicks.
- Google said that these features will be available to preview later this year.
