Google Workspace Security Compliance: A Guide for Businesses

When you value business productivity and want to make communication and collaboration easy, Google Workspace is a go-to solution.

But productivity must always be balanced with security. If not, you risk wasting many, many would-be-productive hours dealing with the consequences.

This article gives a comprehensive treatment of attaining that balance by achieving Google Workspace security compliance. Let’s take a look.

What is Google Workspace Security Compliance?

Google Workspace security compliance is the state of meeting data security standards that are relevant for your industry in your use of Google Workspace. Examples of possible relevant data security and privacy standards include CIS, GDPR, CCPA and HIPAA.

Why Is Security Compliance Crucial for Google Workspace Users?

Lack of security compliance for Google Workspace puts your company at risk for:

Data breaches

Security standards were created for a reason; they are the set of best practices that has proven or shown significant promise in preventing compromise of organizational data. Ignore them at your own risk.

If a data breach happens, it can bring much corporate sorrow in its wake:

• Drain of financial resources
• Reputational damage
• Loss of strategic assets
• Legal penalties

Audit failures and accompanying penalties

Even if threat actors overlook your organization as a target and you are saved from an active breach, regulatory agencies won’t look the other way. 

If your organization is audited by a regulatory agency and your security compliance measures are found to be insufficient, penalties are usually a matter of course. Demands to rectify the situation immediately are a surety.

Key Features of Google Workspace to Ensure Security Compliance

Google Workspace offers built-in security features that aid in compliance, including:

• data encryption
• data access controls
• audit logs that record user activity
• tools for data loss prevention (DLP)
• tools for eDiscovery
• the Google Security Health Page (a general configuration check page which lists all the security-related admin Workspace settings and whether they are enabled or disabled for different organizational units)

Google Workspace also offers the possibility of signing a Data Processing Agreement (DPA) with them, which is a step in the path to attaining GDPR compliance. Similarly, you can sign a HIPAA Business Associate Addendum with them in order to ensure that your data storage within Google Workspace can comply with HIPAA regulations.

How to Implement Google Workspace Security Compliance in Your Business

Implementing Google Workspace security compliance is both easy and hard. 

It’s easy because all you need to do is look at the above section, plus a comprehensive how-to for whichever specific regulatory standard you need to meet, e.g. the Google Workspace and Cloud Identity HIPAA Implementation Guide) and go step by step, making sure you’ve implemented everything. 

The hard part is that you actually have to do it. 

Well, there are some other challenges also - which we’ll get to in the next section - but the need to actually implement each detailed step is somehow always the most challenging. 

Common Security Compliance Challenges

As we just mentioned, the need to actually implement all the different steps that are necessary for security standard compliance is one of the most significant Google Workspace compliance challenges. If you could just flip a “GDPR switch” and presto: compliance! - then many, many more organizations would be 100% compliant. 

Maybe one day. 

Even putting the challenge of comprehensive implementation to the side, however, there still exist a number of other obstacles to Google Workspace security compliance. Let’s take a look at them:

Knowing which standards your organization needs to comply with

Some data regulations are relevant to particular industries (e.g. HIPAA, GLBA); others to specific geographic jurisdictions (e.g. GDPR, CCPA). Some standards are mandatory; others are recommendations. Still others depend on your position as part of a supply chain (e.g. if you’re a supplier for the US Federal Government). 

The first step in a successful compliance implementation is a clear picture of what, exactly, you are trying to comply with.

Knowing where all the relevant settings are

Sometimes trying to find the correct admin setting to turn a Google Workspace feature on or off is like trying to find a needle in a haystack. 

Google does provide a Security Health Page, which is somewhat helpful. This is a general configuration check page which lists all the security-related admin settings and whether they are enabled or disabled for different organizational units in your Workspace. You can adjust the settings from there, which may save you a wild goose chase. 

The Security Health Page, however, is rather general and high-level. You can’t see the security settings for individual Drives, for example. If you need to find and adjust security settings on a more granular level, you’re going to need to go search for them. 

Configuration drift

A secure configuration doesn’t last forever. Updates, app installation and admin errors all contribute to inevitable configuration drift. Your configurations must be continually monitored to ensure that they remain aligned with security compliance standards.

DLP accuracy

When it comes to policies that protect your sensitive, regulated data, your protection can only be as good as your identification of the data as needing protection. 

Google Workspace’s built-in DLP uses regular expressions and exact match word lists to identify sensitive data, both of which have accuracy issues: false positives and false negatives, respectively.

In addition, Google Drive DLP has other limitations which may leave some sensitive data unaccounted for and unprotected.

Best Practices for Maintaining Google Workspace Security Compliance

Continually monitor configurations

If you don’t want your security settings to drift without your awareness, you have to maintain awareness. Checking dozens of configurations daily may seem like a waste of your information security talent - and it probably is. But it’s also necessary, and that’s why it is a best practice to have an automated SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) solution that continually checks Google Workspace and other SaaS applications for misconfigurations. 

Look for a misconfiguration management solution that not only alerts you to misconfigurations, but remediates them or guides you in how to remediate them. 

Increase the accuracy of your DLP

As mentioned above, Google Drive DLP’s data classification is based primarily on regular expressions, which have notable accuracy issues. Tweaking your Google DLP rules as you see what returns false positives and negatives is a must.

For effective data protection at scale, you’ll probably also need to augment the built-in Google DLP with tools that use more advanced data sensitivity analysis methods. Look for solutions that use NLP-based methods, bring wider business context to bear, or - ideally - analyze multiple factors in coming to a conclusion.

Make it hard to overshare 

Oversharing data assets is a prime cause of data exposure and loss. And in Google Workspace as-is, it is SO easy to overshare. 

“Anyone in the organization can access.” 

“Anyone with the link can access.” 

“Anyone who breathes can access.” (Okay, it’s not that bad.)

Making public and organization-wide sharing harder is one of the keys to preventing unnecessary asset sharing. These broad sharing settings certainly shouldn’t be the default option in your corporate Google Drives.  

And because convenience is usually the reason why users choose such wide sharing options, it is a best practice to provide your users with better options: those that fit their desire for convenience, while still maintaining security. Setting up smaller organizational units based on groups that logically need to share information with each other is one such approach.

We recently put out a guide to the different types of risky sharing that are common in corporate SaaS, as well as how to mitigate their risk. You can check it out here.

Role of Third-Party Integrations for Enhanced Security Compliance

Google doesn’t offer built-in capabilities to implement all of the best practices mentioned above. Additional solutions are often necessary. 

For example, the Google Workplace Security Health Page is a helpful basis for assessing your configuration compliance, but it’s not enough, because it doesn’t:

• Check against specific industry-leading compliance frameworks (e.g. CIS)
• Detail the exact entities affected by the misconfiguration, from users to repositories to any other type of record
• Tell you how to correct the misconfiguration

For that you need an independent third-party solution that integrates with Google Workspace, like DoControl’s SaaS Misconfiguration Management.

You will run up against similar limitations and the need for third-party enhancement when it comes to supporting compliance with your:

• Data Loss Prevention (DLP)
• Mitigation of risky sharing
• Identity security

FAQs:

What happens if my business fails to meet Google Workspace security compliance?

If your business fails to meet Google Workspace security compliance, you put your business at risk of compliance audit failures or, worse, actual data breaches. Likely consequences include reputational damage, legal penalties, loss of strategic assets and drain of your financial resources in recovering from the breach.

How can I ensure my company is compliant in Google Workspace?

To ensure compliance in Google Workspace, implement security checklists, configure data protection settings and adhere to legal agreements like the Cloud Data Processing Addendum. Regularly review and update your policies to align with current regulations.

Can small businesses benefit from Google Workspace security compliance features?

Yes, small businesses can certainly benefit from Google Workspace security compliance features. The drain on a small business that suffers from a data breach can be even larger proportionally than that of a large business, due to the lack of information security specialists in the small business. It makes sense, therefore, to implement Google Workspace security compliance features in order to give your small business that measure of protection.

Is Google Workspace compliant with GDPR?

Google Workspace has the ability to be compliant with GDPR, but you still need to take the appropriate compliance steps, which include:

• Signing a Data Processing Agreement (DPA) with Google
• Limiting data access to authorized personnel and practicing data minimization
• Enabling encryption and enforcing two-factor authentication (2FA)
• Regularly auditing and monitoring data processing activities
• Setting procedures for handling data subject requests (access, erasure, etc.)
• Updating your privacy policy and training employees on GDPR compliance

DoControl: The Solution for Enhanced Google Workplace Security

DoControl was designed expressly for the multiple layers and attack surfaces of Google Workspace: data, identities, configurations and connected apps. The DoControl platform and solutions can help your organization easily implement all the Google Workspace best practices mentioned in this post.

DoControl’s Data Access Governance and Data Loss Prevention secure your data all across your Google Workspace ecosystem. Advanced data classification methods mean that no sensitive data goes undiscovered, and automated workflows mean that any detected threat can be mitigated in near real-time. 

DoControl’s Identity Threat Detection & Response (ITDR) and Insider Risk Management secure your Google Workspace user identities, protecting you from external threat actors or insider threats. Data from multiple business-critical SaaS applications and behavior benchmarking for individuals and groups, along with important contextual information from HRIS, EDR and IdP systems enable smart differentiation between normal business activity and suspicious actions.  

DoControl’s Shadow App Discovery & Remediation secure your third-party OAuth connected apps by monitoring app behavior and removing unnecessary apps and app permissions.

DoControl’s SaaS Misconfiguration Management secures your Google Workspace admin configurations, checking them against industry standards like CIS and offering remediation guidance.  

Secure Your Productivity

Not taking Google Workspace security compliance seriously puts your productivity at risk of a crash. Fortunately, you’ve read this article, which shows you do take it seriously. And you now have knowledge and tools that you can apply to attaining that security compliance. Now go and make compliance a reality!