How-to guide: Adopting Zero-Trust security with Google Workspace

According to Verizon’s 2024 Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR), 68% of data breaches analyzed involved a non-malicious human element (e.g., a person falling victim to a social engineering attack or making an error). Considering this, it’s more important than ever for businesses to move away from traditional perimeter-based security. 

We believe that Zero Trust is the right approach – a framework that we pioneered and adopted a decade ago. It requires all users to be authenticated, authorized, and continuously validated before being able to access applications and data. With Google Workspace, businesses can adopt the same security approach for their collaboration and communication needs with minimal effort from IT. This blog offers guidance on how admins can use Workspace to accelerate their Zero Trust adoption and strengthen their security posture. 

1. Enforce Zero Trust access:

• Create granular context-aware access (CAA) policies based on attributes such as user identity, location, or device security status to help control user access to Workspace apps and APIs. 

• Use Monitor Mode to understand the impact of CAA policies before deploying it to your end users, minimizing disruption to work. 

• Extend CAA controls to other SaaS and web apps with Chrome Enterprise Premium.

2. Guide users to do the right thing:

• Leverage AI Classification in Drive to automatically and continuously identify, classify, and label sensitive data at scale. AI Classification offers privacy-preserving, customer-specific models that are fine-tuned for your organization’s unique needs. 

• Create tailored data loss prevention (DLP) policies to help detect confidential information and control the sharing of it inside and outside your organization. Leverage DLP Insights and proactive recommendations that do the heavy lifting on your behalf.

• Minimize unintended data loss by setting criteria that must be met in order for a user to be able to share sensitive content. By combining DLP rules with context-aware access conditions (e.g.,device security status), you have greater control over data without disrupting how users get the work done.

3. Protect data on virtually any device, anywhere:

• Manage devices with Google endpoint management to help secure company data across mobile devices and laptops. 

• Approve, block, or delete a device’s access to data or erase data on a lost or stolen device.

• Integrate with purpose-built 3rd party device management and security solutions, such as Omnissa and CrowdStrike.

With increasingly sophisticated cyber threats, traditional perimeter-based security is no longer sufficient. Zero-Trust security is the modern approach to address these risks, and Workspace provides the tools to make it a reality across your organization. By implementing Zero Trust access controls, guiding users towards secure behavior, and protecting data across devices, you can meaningfully improve your organization’s security posture. 

Learn more about our Zero-Trust security approach and get started with a no-cost trial. For more technical content, check out our Zero Trust whitepaper, get a deep dive on AI classification, and view our blog post on defending against malware and phishing attacks.