Best Practices for Google Apps Security

Today organizations are moving towards the cloud. Thanks to the flexibility and omnipresence that the cloud computing provides to your organization. You don’t need to own or maintain any infrastructure. You can access, work and share from multiple locations and devices. When we talk of such cloud-based packages Google for Work comes out to be one of the most popular cloud-based applications in use. It’s a wonderful cloud-based collaboration and productivity tool by the technology pioneer, Google. It can very effectively run and support organizations, no matter how small or large they are.

There are packages for everyone; and the G-suite en-houses every product that is needed for a company to function. It has Gmail, Google Drive, Doc, Forms, Sheet, Hangout, Calendar, and Vault. But, with the adoption of cloud technology, many new risks and threats are also creeping into the enterprises and posing a threat to the safety of their confidential information. The hackers and attackers have become more sophisticated and shrewd than before. As per Google’s finding, 45% of internet users are duped by the most common phishing and spoofing attacks. And in less than 30 minutes of being phished around, 20% of these accounts are under the control of hackers. All around the world, the incidences of ransom-ware attack have also increased.

• How are you going to protect and shield the cloud infrastructure of your organization?
• How can you add Google Apps Security to your G-suite?
• Have you heard of single sign-on security solution (also known as SSO1) from CloudCodes?

Apart from G Suite, it works in integration with SalesForce, DropBox, Google for Work, Zoho, Office 365 and FreshDesk. It’s an out-of-the-box product, which is developed like some kind of reverse engineering against every tactic and trick that hackers use. It supports features like Geo-fencing, Multifactor Authentication, IP restriction, Browser restriction, AD integration, Password Policy and Device Restriction. You can tune each of these settings from a single login page where you have an interactive dashboard to inform you about every activity taking place. It automatically prepares reports and notifies about any suspicious activities.

Let’s have a look at these features, which are in sync with the best practices to secure Google Apps.

1. Stealing of login credentials happens a lot these days. Therefore, almost every company tries to adopt the two-factor authentication (OTP based). SSO1 gives more advanced protection with biometric-based Multifactor Authentication that uses your Smartphone to feed fingerprint. Many times, internal employees give an invitation to hackers (often unknowingly) with their activities like using public Wi-Fi, having weak passwords and using unauthorized devices.
2. Organizations often try to find various ways to have control such acts. SSO1 very intelligently covers these gaps. Its IP restriction feature creates two kinds of IPs, blacklisted and whitelist one. All the risky IP addresses (or IP ranges) can be put to a blacklisted category that will block the access automatically.
3. Similar to it, is the Geo-Fencing feature, which automatically blocks the access to your company’s login page from countries that are known for their hacking groups. You can either enter the countries names or feed their geographical locations (latitudes and longitudes).
4. Coming to the weak password issue, SSO1’s Strong Password Policy gives the capability to the administrators to compel users to use a strong password. The admin can fix the length, complexity (combination of special characters, numerals, and cases), expiry limit and add various restrictions. You can restrict usernames, keywords, and repeated passwords. All these together help to make a very strong password, which is tough to break!
5. In sync with this feature, is the Self Password feature, which allows the users to reset their passwords on their own, without taking the help from the IT team.
6. Moving to the next security practice, which is followed by various companies, is the limitation on the use browsers. You may have noticed that, when you try to access some sites through mobile browsers (or not-so-authentic computer browsers), the pages show an error message. Well, this is done to address one of the popular hacking methods known as ‘SQL Injection’. The hackers use some tailor-made browsers that inject code in the login fields to steal the login credentials. SSO1 has Browser Restriction feature to tackle this problem. It restricts your page to be accessed only by the authentic browsers (that you choose) like Chrome or Mozilla.

With all these features, you can very effectively increase the G-suite security to be safe from any kind of online risks and threats. It’s very important to be one step ahead and to know and follow the latest practices to safeguard your cloud world. Be prepared, be safe!

For More Details: https://www.cloudcodes.com/