Major enterprises in South Africa and across Africa are fast migrating to Google Workspace to reduce the risk of data loss, improve security, enhance collaboration and cut costs.
This is according to Nick Treurnicht, Google Certified Professional Collaboration Engineer and Deployment Specialist at Digicloud Africa, who says channel partners across the continent are moving to resell Google Workspace as customer demand soars.
“Where only a decade ago, large enterprises weren’t yet using Google, we now see major local retailers, logistics, manufacturing and production enterprises rolling out Google Workspace for cost savings, ease of use and security, with an array of innovative enterprise tools and features. They are also able to slash the number of IT resources needed to support IT, which is particularly relevant now for hybrid and remote workforces,” Treurnicht says. “Google is the future and the new way of working. There is no licensing complexity or audits, and it is continually being enhanced.”
Impervious to ransomware
A top priority for all organisations is security, and Treurnicht says Google Workspace’s advanced data loss prevention and security features mean organisations no longer need a complex assortment of third-party tools.
“Because everything is in a browser, secure in the cloud, Google is impervious to ransomware,” he says. “Companies running everything in Google are at very low risk of being infected in the first place, but should ransomware get in via an external drive or social media phishing attack, only the device will be encrypted. All the data and work will be safely in Google Workspace. You can’t encrypt a Google sheet, because it’s not a file – it’s a page. If a PC glitches, you don’t lose anything. You can format it or move to another device, get back online, and everything is where you left it. I don’t know how people sleep soundly at night if they’re still running their own servers, which they have to patch and secure.”
Google Workspace cloud-based productivity suite is used by more than five million organisations worldwide, from large banks and retailers with hundreds of thousands of people to fast-growing startups, helping teams to work together securely in new, more efficient ways. Google, with its dedicated expert security and privacy teams and collaboration with the international security research community, is committed to protecting against security threats of all kinds, innovating new security tools for users and admins. Gmail alone scans over 300 billion attachments for malware every week and prevents more than 99.9% of spam, phishing and malware from reaching users.
Google Workspace is compliant with key global certification and legislation, including ISO/IEC 27017, ISO/IEC 27018, ISO/IEC 27001, Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) GDPR and South Africa’s Protection of Personal Information (POPI) Act.
Google Workspace supports a range of access and authentication options, including two-step verification and security keys, SAML 2.0, OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect, with information rights management in Google Drive and restricted e-mail delivery.
For asset protection, it offers e-mail spam, phishing and malware protection, e-mail spoofing prevention, Gmail confidential mode, DLP for Gmail and Drive, trusted domains for Google Drive sharing and an array of video meeting security measures. Google Workspace can also use endpoint management features to protect information on mobile and desktop devices; allow admins to restore a user’s Drive or Gmail data; and turn on Google Vault to retain data.
Says Treurnicht: “You don’t need third-party security and backup solutions because it’s all in one console.” He highlights features such as the ability to set alerts for unauthorised sharing and stop such sharing if it occurs. “You can easily run security investigations, do content compliance rules and set rules alerts – for example, when someone changes a password. The context-aware access features are very useful when a password or two-step code are not secure enough. With this, you can set rules restricting access by specific IP addresses or geographic location, or you can create policies allowing access only from encrypted devices and company-owned devices.”
See the Google Workspace Security White Paper for more information.
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