UPDATED 03:00 EDT / OCTOBER 10 2018

CLOUD

Google beefs up G Suite security and gives admins more control over cloud resources

Google LLC rolled out a couple more security updates to its cloud computing platform today, providing better protection of data and tighter control of the cloud resources its customers use.

Google knows full well that security is always one of the uppermost concerns of information technology administrators, who need to stay on the alert for any potential problems or breaches with their systems. That’s particularly true for users of G Suite, which includes productivity tools such as Google Docs and Google Sheets that store tons of sensitive data.

To give admins more peace of mind, Google is today launching a new Alert Center for G Suite for all customers at no additional cost. The alert center is designed to do two things: provide a “unified view” of alerts in order to manage these more efficiently; and to deliver insights into how vulnerable an organization is at the domain and user level.

“The alert center includes specific alerts on security issues that may impact your organization’s G Suite services, such as spikes in phishing activity, and information on devices within your organization that are exhibiting suspicious behavior or have been compromised,” said Google product managers Reena Nadkarni and Rae Wang in a blog post. “In addition, G Suite Enterprise edition domains can use the G Suite security center for integrated remediation of issues surfaced by alerts.”

Besides protecting customer’s data, Google also wants to reassure admins they have full control over the resources they use as well. With that in mind, Google is updating its Organization Policy Service.

It’s used by admins to set restrictions on how specific resources such as virtual machines and container images are configured. Google is adding two new policies, including location restriction and domain restricted sharing to provide more granular levels of control, the product managers said.

Location restriction, which will soon be made available in beta, allows admins to limit where new resources are created to specific geographic regions. So for example, an admin could specify Germany as the only location where new VMs can be created.

As for the domain restricted sharing policy, available now, it allows admins to set limits on the domains that can access Google cloud resources. “For example, you could use this constraint to grant access to vendors or partners, but limit their access to specific folders or projects,” Nadkarni and Wang said.

Analyst Holger Mueller of Constellation Research Inc. said the enhanced policy controls would be welcomed by admins in light of the recent privacy regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation in Europe.

“When deploying to the cloud, enterprises not only find technical but also organizational challenges to manage both physical and human resources,” Mueller said. “Being able to use more flexible administration tools that can follow the new regulatory changes is a big win, as it allows admins to focus more on the differentiating capabilities rather than the compliance aspects of next-generation applications.”

Image: Mizter_x94/Pixabay

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