G Suite Security Updates Bring New Features to Gmail, Meet & Chat

Google today announced G Suite security updates in Gmail, Meet, and Chat, along with some new tools to help administrators manage and protect enterprise devices in the Admin Console.

One of these is the pilot of a standard called Brand Indicators for Message Identification (BIMI) in Gmail. The idea behind BIMI is to help organizations that authenticate emails with DMARC to validate the ownership of corporate logos and securely share them with Google. Authenticated emails go through anti-abuse checks before Google displays the logo in avatar slots in Gmail UI. 

"By requiring strong authentication, users and email security systems can have increased confidence in the source of emails, and senders will be able to leverage their brand trust and provide their customers with a more immersive experience," Google writes in a blog post.

The BIMI pilot will start in coming weeks with limited senders and two Certification Authorities, Entrust Datacard and DigiCert, to validate logo ownership. Google anticipates BIMI will be made generally available in the coming months.

In Google Meet, hosts will have more control over who can "knock" and join their chats. This step builds on a recent new measure that requires people not included on a meeting invite to knock in order to join. Once someone is ejected, they won't be able to join the same meeting. Hosts will also have advanced "safety locks," which will determine which method of joining (calendar invite, phone, etc.) will require approval for attendees to jump in. These locks also let the host control participants' activity by limiting who can chat and present in each meeting. 

Phishing protections already in Gmail are now coming to Google Chat. Links sent via Chat will be checked against data from Safe Browsing and flagged if malicious. In the coming weeks, Chat users will have the option to report and block chat rooms if they notice suspicious activity.

IT admins will notice changes to the Devices page in the G Suite admin console, which has been redesigned to simplify navigation and display the number of devices managed by each service. Google is launching an integration with Apple Business Manager so G Suite Enterprise admins can distribute and manage corporate Apple devices.

On the data management side, admins will have the option to use automated information rights management (IRM) controls to block employees from downloading, printing, or copying Google Drive files, sheets, or slides that have sensitive content. This is available in beta for G Suite Enterprise, G Suite Enterprise Essentials, and G Suite Enterprise for Education. 

Read the full blog post for more details.

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