Google Rolls Out Security Center for G Suite Enterprise

Google is integrating a new security center into G Suite to give administrators a more granular view of security metrics for employees' devices, and guidance for managing them.

The idea behind this update is to give admins a single place to see their enterprise security posture. In one dashboard, a series of individual windows presents data including suspicious device activity and how spam and malware emails are targeting users across the business.

"It basically helps administrators by providing them a single comprehensive view into the security posture of the organization," says Chad Tyler, product manager for the Security Center.

Admins can click on individual graphs to learn more about specific types of data and act on them. If you want to learn more about phishing attacks, you can view what types of phishing emails users are seeing, and who receives the most malicious messages. If someone is often targeted, you know to ensure they have additional precautions like two-factor authentication.

In another example, admins can also view which files are triggering data loss prevention alerts. Based on this data, they can take action to see which users are sharing information. The data in Security Center is collected from devices logged into their corporate Google accounts.

"A lot of this information is based on usage logs we have around auditing within the administrator console," says Tyler. "When a user is using Gmail, there are logs associated with the different things sent and received. This is the organization's view of what's going on."

In a separate window, the Security Center has a list of security guidance recommendations. Admins can see their current settings and read up on Google's recommended settings to reduce risk. Tyler points out that all best practices will look the same in each admin's Security Center so it's worth considering individual settings to determine which is best for your organization.

This component of Security Center is less of a notification systems and more of a management tool, says Tyler. Google will update them based on new security information or new settings.

The Security Center is solely for admins and won't present alerts or best practices to end users, he adds, noting that Gmail already has measures in place to prevent successful attacks.

"There's already a lot of protection for the end users, to keep them from clicking what's known to be spam," Tyler says. "This is just giving information to administrators to better understand what's going on and make those higher-level decisions."

Security Center is part of G Suite Enterprise and will automatically appear in admin consoles over the next few days.

Related Content: