Secure Sharing With Google Drive for Work

Using Google Drive for Work can help to increase your company’s productivity, but it can also lead to concerns over the ability to secure company data. You don’t want your company’s important files being shared inappropriately and you worry you won’t know it’s happened until it’s too late. Google hopes to relieve these kinds of concerns with the addition of new security features in Google Drive for Work that will give system administrators more control over Google Apps documents.

CIO explains that the new features will allow admins to apply more specific policies for file sharing both inside and outside their companies, as well as set custom alerts that are triggered by certain actions and events.

“Security ranks at the top of the list of concerns that companies have about moving to the cloud, which is why we’ve put security front and center in our products from the beginning,” Scott Johnston, Google Drive’s director of product management, wrote in a blog post. “And to keep your company’s data even more secure in Drive, we’re launching new sharing controls, alerts, and audit events to Google Drive for Work and Google for Education.”

Here’s a peek at how you can keep your work more secure using Google Drive for Work:

Google Drive for Work Customers Can…

Set share settings.

Sometimes your files require different share settings. You might want the marketing department to be able to share files externally, but prevent the financial department from doing the same. To better manage your individual sharing needs, you can turn off sharing outside your company’s domain for the organizational unit(s) of your choice, while still allowing others to work and share files with anyone they need to.

Create custom Drive alerts.

You can now setup custom Drive alerts in order to track when specific actions are taken in Drive. For example, you can be alerted if a file containing the word “confidential” in the title is shared outside the company.

Google Apps for Work Customers Can…

Setup custom admin alerts.

Many administrators receive notifications for events that affect their domain, like when users are nearing their storage limits or when monthly bills are coming due. You can also choose to receive alerts when other events occur (like suspicious login activity or when a shared calendar is deleted).

Let people reset their own passwords.

You can prevent employees from losing valuable time when locked out of their account by allowing them to securely reset their own passwords. Sounds like something you don’t want for your organization? No problem! Admins can easily turn this feature off.

Anyone Can…

Disable downloading, printing, and copying of any file.

You can disable downloading, printing, and copying from the advanced sharing menu with Information Rights Management (IRM). This works perfectly for when you want to share a file with only a few people and is available for any file stored in Google Drive.

Share quickly with anyone outside your organization.

You want to make sure the people you’re sharing your files with can see them right away, whether they use Drive or not. Now, you’ll be able to share files with any email address and they’ll be able to view the files without having to sign-in to a Google account. Admins can disable this feature if you’d like to require that certain departments sign-in before viewing.

On the Horizon

These features will be available in the coming weeks and months to companies that use Drive for Work and Apps for Work.

New features to be on the lookout for are the ability to place a time limit on how long the shared document can be accessed, as well as support for trusted domains. Google knows that many companies have multiple Google Apps domains or may want to work closely with a business that also uses Google Apps. Support for trusted domains will allow admins to select multiple Google Apps domains that users can share with.

Google hopes these features will help demonstrate that Google Drive for Work is all your work; safe, available everywhere, and easy to share.