Political campaign teams, high-level business leaders and executives, IT admins, activists, and journalists all have one thing in common - they require an advanced level of security to keep sensitive information secure. Google’s Advanced Protection Program for the enterprise, a nearly impenetrable security program designed to keep confidential data safe, is now generally available for Enterprise G Suite users.
The announcement was made at Google Cloud Next ‘19 UK in November, signaling an opportunity for high-risk G Suite users to take advantage of the unparalleled level of security offered by the Advanced Protection Program.
What is the Advanced Protection Program?
Google’s Advanced Protection Program for the enterprise, originally announced in the summer of 2018 and subsequently released in beta, was created to safeguard Google Accounts of high-risk G Suite users - especially those who are at risk of targeted attacks. This means that the Advanced Protection Program is tailor-made for users involved in sensitive work, including activism, thought leadership, journalism, political campaigning, and executive-level work. The Program can be easily enrolled in by users who purchase and register the Program’s physical keys.
The Program uses Google's strongest level of account security, protecting user accounts from phishing attacks by requiring the use of a physical key to log in. Advanced Protection also limits access to your Gmail and Google Drive data to only Google apps and selected third-party apps to further protect your files and messages. It also implements additional manual steps to Google’s account recovery process, ensuring that bad actors can’t access your account by impersonating users and obtaining their information through this commonly used access method.
How the Advanced Protection Program protects high-risk users
High-risk Google users are most often targeted by sophisticated phishing scam attempts, and those users are often too busy to discern between real emails and potentially harmful messages. Many of these phishing attempts are professionally custom-made to specifically target a high-level user like a politician, business executive, or activist. These phishing attempts are done with the sole purpose of infiltrating an account to gain access to classified or top secret information.
Google’s Advanced Protection Program ensures that even if high-risk users get caught up in a phishing attempt, malicious actors won’t be able to access their accounts without the physical security keys provided to enrolled users. These physical keys would need to be stolen from a user to gain access to their account, making account breaches nearly impossible. When log-in information for an account has been obtained, the Google account user must prove their identity through the use of the unique physical security key - without it, they cannot gain access to the account. This guarantees that even with access to an account’s username and password, they won’t be able to gain access to sensitive files or emails.
Titan Security Keys
High-risk Google users can take solace in knowing that the Advanced Protection Program will also protect them from malicious or untrusted third-party apps and that malicious users won’t be able to impersonate them to gain access to an account. Even if a user enrolled in the Protection Program loses their security key, the mandatory back-up security key guarantees that they’ll still have access to their account and will be able to keep it locked down. With Google’s Advanced Protection Program, high-risk users can breathe easy knowing that they no longer have to worry about phishing attacks and embarrassing or damaging leaks.
To find out more about how UpCurve Cloud’s team of cloud technology experts can secure your Google account and implement and integrate advanced solutions like G Suite, contact us today.
Contact Us to Learn More about Transforming Your Business