Google’s information security team - working to protect your data

Posted by Sam Srinivas, Product Management Director, Google Information Security Team

Editors note: This post is part of a series that explores the top ten reasons why customers trust Google with their business data. A complete top ten list can be found here.

As you compose a message in Gmail or collaborate on a document in Google Docs, you probably don’t often think about what we do to protect the data in that email or document. But behind the scenes we have an information security team that makes protecting your information its highest priority.

Information security is something that is important to every business. As Internet use has become widespread in the business world, attacks on applications and systems are becoming pervasive and sophisticated. Increasingly, monitoring and protecting applications and users against these attacks requires a great deal of infrastructure and technical expertise — usually more than one person or a small team can manage. Our information security team includes hundreds of full-time members working in close cooperation with the engineers developing Google applications. Some of the world's leading security researchers are members of our team, allowing Google to stay at the forefront of detection, response, and security software best practices.

We monitor our applications and systems continuously, using sophisticated automated systems that are designed to detect unusual activity and block it or flag it for immediate analysis by our monitoring team. We provide end-user features including 2-step verification, which defeats many common attacks such as trying to break into an account using a stolen password. Our Safe Browsing service helps protect users against malware and phishing. All of this technology and expertise comes together to enhance the security of your Google Apps data, allowing your IT staff to focus more of their attention on your business’s strategic needs.

“As the threats in the external environment change, [Google is] at the forefront of preventing, responding and anticipating. That’s one of the great things about partnering with Google - you have some of the best minds in the world working on those problems, which really frees me up to work on the problems that are unique to me and that I can really specialize in.”

- Todd Pierce, CIO of Genetech

Finally, we work to educate users about online safety. To that end, one of the most important things you can do to improve the security of your Google Apps accounts is to start using 2-step verification. We encourage you to set it up and start exploring other ways to better protect your information.