Google launches G Suite Enterprise edition with Drive data loss prevention, S/MIME encryption

Google today is announcing the launch of a new Enterprise edition of its G Suite portfolio of cloud services for organizations. The offering comes with everything in the existing G Suite Business edition, as well as other features that should be interesting for admins that want to improve security.

G Suite includes access to Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs/Sheets/Slides/Drive, Google Sites, and Google Forms, among other things. This package was referred to as Google Apps until September. In addition to G Suite Business, the other previously available G Suite service tiers are G Suite Basic and G Suite for Education, Nonprofits, or Government.

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G Suite Enterprise introduces data loss prevention (DLP) for Google Drive, ensuring that sensitive information doesn’t get shared on Google’s cloud storage app. “G Suite’s DLP protection goes beyond standard DLP with easy-to-configure rules and OCR recognition of content stored in images so admins can easily enforce policies and control how data is shared,” G Suite product manager Reena Nadkarni wrote in a blog post. The previously announced DLP capability for Gmail is also available for G Suite Enterprise edition customers.

Google is also making it possible for organizations to use their own S/MIME encryption certificates with Gmail, and admins will be able to query Gmail logs using Google BigQuery cloud data warehousing service.

Plus, admins at organizations that pay for G Suite enterprise edition can require end users to use two-step authentication (2FA) with Security Keys like Yubico’s every time they log in. “Admins will also be able to manage the deployment of Security Keys and view usage reports,” Nadkarni wrote.

And Google is making it possible for organizations to use third-party tools for archiving data from Gmail; this goes beyond archiving with the Google Vault service.

Perhaps the most prominent competitor of G Suite Enterprise edition is the Office 365 Business subscriptions from Microsoft. Microsoft announced S/MIME encryption support in Office 365 in 2014. DLP is available for several Office 365 apps, including OneDrive for Business. Admins can allow employees to use 2FA with Office 365. And Microsoft lets people run queries on Exchange data in Power BI business intelligence tool and archive email data using third-party offerings.