Google (GOOG) Beefs up Google Drive Security

Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) Director of Product Management, Google Drive, Scott Johnston, posted the following to the Google for Work Blog on Monday:

Security has always been a top priority for Google. It’s no different for Google Drive: so far this year we’ve launched a number of security enhancements, including Information Rights Management (IRM), custom audit alerts, new sharing controls, Password Alert, new password recovery options, Whitelisted Domain sharing and the Security Key.

Earlier this year, the number of paying organizations actively using Google Drive crossed one million, including companies like The New York Times, Uber, Fossil, Wedding Wire and BBVA. To show our ongoing commitment to keeping their work and employees safe, we’re rolling out new updates and features for our customers.

Enhanced eDiscovery with Google Apps Vault

To give businesses even more visibility and control over employee files, Google Drive will offer enhanced eDiscovery capabilities for Google Apps Vault. The same retention policies and legal hold capabilities currently available for email and chat have been extended to cover files in Google Drive. These capabilities help you meet your legal obligations and ensure that employee files are archived and available as long as needed, even if employees delete those files from their Drive. These new capabilities are in a limited rollout now, with full availability planned for the coming months.

A new standard for privacy

Over the years we’ve completed third-party SOC2 / SOC3 security audits and achieved ISO 27001 certification to provide transparency and accountability around our security procedures. Today, we’re furthering our commitment to protect your data by adding the new ISO/IEC 27018:2014 privacy standard to our compliance framework. This audit validates our privacy practices and contractual commitments to our customers, verifying for example that we don’t use your data for advertising, that the data that you entrust with us remains yours and that we provide you with tools to delete and export your data.

More secure, even on the go

More and more employees are using phones and tablets for work, and usage of Google Drive on mobile is on the rise. In fact, in January of this year, Google Drive first appeared on ComScore’s list of top 25 mobile apps at number 25, and since then it has climbed to number 16 on the list.¹ To protect company data on mobile devices, both company- and employee-owned, we’ve continued to update the Mobile Device Management (MDM) included for our business customers. With mobile device and application management, you can monitor usage, enforce strong passwords and enable device encryption. If an employee phone is lost or stolen, you can wipe all of the data. Or if an employee leaves the company, you can selectively wipe corporate data while leaving personal data untouched.

Today businesses rely on the cloud to make their work more accessible and collaborative than ever, and they also want it to be more secure. We’re committed to making Google Drive the safest place for all of your work.

Reference:

1. Source: comScore Mobile Metrix, August 2015, U.S.

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