Over 2 Billion employees at 6 Million companies use Google’s Workspace - formerly known as GSuite. Companies use the Workspace tools for a variety of tasks like email, document management, cloud storage and more. Google’s platform for business tools is used by companies with tens of thousands of employees like Alphabet (owner of Google), Costco (large US-based warehouse), Meta (formerly known as Facebook) and many others. It is also very successful with small organizations that only have a handful of employees. Jenario ltd, the company behind ProtectYour.Business is one example.

Google Workspace & Security

One of the reasons organizations like the US Department of Defense (DoD) trust Google Workspace is the Industry-Leading Level of Security they can get from using Google’s services. But with any other tools you use for your business, the way you use them has a big impact on what you get out of them.

1. Built-in Security: A lot of Google’s security happens out of sight. Many of the protections that are built-in to Google’s products do their job without our involvement. This means that many attacks against your accounts are being mitigated without your knowledge or you having to take any actions.

2. Security-Features: While Google claims, and is known for, to protect against many of the most common threats online, there are a lot of ways you can protect your business against the consequences of hacking attempts.
   

In this article, we’re going to cover the most relevant ways you can use the Security features offered to you with Google Workspace and explain how they reduce the risk of your business falling victim to cyber-attacks.

If you’re the owner and administrator of a Google Workspace instance, these are 5 tips for keeping your google workspace secure and protect your business.

• Start With Your Accounts

Your Google accounts are the keys to your company's data. Each of your employees has one of these in order to access their emails and documents. Online accounts usually consist of a username and a password. This is also the case with Google Workspace. Most data-breaches start with an account being compromised. This is why we need to protect them.

• Enable Two-Factor Authentication (2FA)

2FA is an additional layer of security that will make it much more difficult for an attacker to get into one of your employees accounts. Start with the admin accounts as they are the most critical accounts in your organization. Eventually you want every account in your organization to user 2FA as they all have access to data you don’t want to become available to outsiders: Google published a step-by-step instruction on how to mandate 2FA for your Workspace instance: 2FA guide for admins.

• Password Alert

Tell your employees that they should use a strong and unique password for their Google Workspace account. This will reduce the risk of their passwords leak. Google offers a password alert extension for Chrome that detects if someone types their Google Workspace password on a different page than google. Link: Google password alert

• Protect from Malware

One way attackers work is by distributing malicious documents and applications that will give them access to their victim’s computers. A lot of this malware is distributed via email or links. As a Google Workspace admin you can enable additional protections that will increase the protection from malicious code being shared with your employees. Guide: Advanced phishing and malware protection

• Talk To Your Employees About Security

No matter if you have 2, 10, or 50 employees, it’s important for them to be aware that they have access to your company’s most critical resource, customer data. Heightened awareness and a sense of responsibility help employees be more alert and careful.

These steps are a great starting point to protect your Google Workspace instance. We’re happy to talk to you about how we can help you to go through these steps and even take your cybersecurity to the next level.

Contact us for a Free 15 Minutes Consultation and we will guide you to protect your business.