GCP – Keep it safe and simple: Security enhancements in Google Meet, Gmail, and admin controls

Customers count on Google Workspace’s security to help protect collaboration and communication worldwide. That’s why we are constantly developing security innovations that provide our users, admins, and their organizations with a safer experience when using our products. And it’s this trust that has led us to a new milestone – today, more than 250 million 30-day active devices licensed through Google Workspace, Cloud Identity and Chrome Enterprise are managed by our endpoint management solution. Within Google Workspace and Cloud Identity, multiple devices per user can be managed at no additional cost.  

In further service of our customers’ security, today we’re announcing additional protections in Google Meet and Gmail to help address abuse, as well as new enhancements in the admin console that simplify security and give admins more device management controls. 

Keep your meetings safe

Keeping all aspects of your meeting safe is a top priority. In Google Meet, we employ a vast array of counter-abuse measures that are on by-default like anti-hijacking measures for web meetings and telephony dial-ins. Soon, we’ll roll out a new safety feature in Meet that allows you to report abuse during a meeting. As part of this report, you can choose to send a video clip to help us take appropriate action and keep our user community safe. This feature will be available to all Google Meet users.

In addition, we will soon launch a new feature that records a log event if someone in your organization reports abuse during an internal meeting, helping admins have better visibility into any undesirable activity.

Rules, Alert Center and Security Center enhancements to make security simpler

We’re always working to empower admins with advanced, easy-to-use security tools that help them keep their organizations safe. In the admin console, we’re now providing rule discovery and management at the admin console homepage level in all Google Workspace editions. To help admins decide which rules to proactively implement, they will see helpful information on the benefits of implementing rule types, use-case based guidance for managing Google-provided rules, and how to create rules for other use cases.  

We’re also creating a new Rules Templates page for Google Workspace Enterprise Standard and Enterprise Plus subscribers that serves as the hub for premade, customizable templates. These templates enable quick rule setup for common use-cases based on best practices. To see the results of rules, we’re enabling one-click access to the analysis of specific results for activity and data protection rule types in our new Investigation Tool integration.

Next, we are making updates to the Alert Center to help admins easily understand activity in their domain, so they can take necessary steps to remediate issues if they arise. Admins have the option to turn on notifications within the Alert Center for 11 new Google-provided system defined rules alerts notifications and Reporting Rules notifications that were previously only delivered through email. In the coming weeks, we’re also increasing the ease of use and visibility of key Alert Center remediation and management features via a quick action bar that helps admins more readily take action.

Further, we are adding new Chat, Meet, Groups, Voice, and Calendar logs in the Investigation Tool within the Security Center for Google Workspace. This will help admins understand important activity in their domain and take action from within the Investigation Tool.

Device and app management enhancements to give admins more control

We’re adding more security features to devices under basic management so that a greater subset of our customers have access to these protections. In the coming weeks, Google Workspace admins will be able to block and unblock mobile devices under basic device management, helping them control which mobile devices have access to Google Workspace data.

Next, we’re making it faster and easier to manage app use and deployment for your organization with the recent release of a new unified app management experience in the admin console. With this release, admins can manage web and mobile apps in a single place within the admin console.

Click-time protection on external email clients

A key feature of Google Workspace’s Advanced Malware and Phishing protection suite is Gmail’s malicious link checking functionality. Sending links to malicious websites is an all-too-common form of online abuse, and since these malicious links can be sent via email, Google adds click-time link protections for all official Gmail clients (web, Android, and iPhone & iPad). Today, we’re extending many of these key protections to popular IMAP clients such as Apple Mail, Outlook, and more, so you can have the same strong link checking protection you experience in official Gmail clients.

For the specified IMAP client users, clicking a link in a recent message will initiate a malicious link check. If nothing malicious is detected, the user will be taken to the link destination. For older messages, a window might appear, requiring a tap or click to open the link. These new protections are now rolling out.

With these enhancements, we are helping our customers stay safe when using Google Workspace products. Learn more about what’s next in security and how to implement cutting-edge Google Workspace security in your organization in the latest installment of Google Cloud Security Talks, live today.