Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is a suite of cloud computing services, tools, and infrastructure offered by Google. GCP provides various security features to protect your data while it’s in transit or at rest.

This blog post will give you some common security risks with the Google Cloud Platform and how to avoid them with the GCP Security measures.

Lack of visibility

G Suite users may use applications and services without IT’s knowledge or consent where they could potentially share or misuse sensitive data. G Suite accounts can be configured to send alerts whenever certain types of suspicious activity occur, such as when a user shares their credentials with an unknown party, signs in from a new device for the first time, or attempts to perform functions that have been disabled by policy.

Insecure network configurations

Network configuration errors are one of the leading causes behind high-profile breaches as well as countless smaller-scale incidents. A network security audit normally entails a thorough examination of all network infrastructure and systems that are accessible over the internet. It also entails an examination of the security procedures in place to safeguard the network infrastructure, including network devices. A G Suite includes access to the Advanced Networking Pack (ANP) at no additional cost which provides GCP customers with enterprise-grade network management capabilities for G suite resources. G Suite users can also use private IP addresses in order to perform functions that would normally require public IP address access, such as setting up VPNs or managing load balancers.

Unprotected services

G Suite administrators must ensure that Google has properly secured any customer data it stores, and that sensitive information is not exposed through web interfaces, APIs, logs files, direct user actions on a service without first being encrypted, etc. G Suite controls help enforce policies designed to protect against accidental exposure of personally identifiable information by Enforcing encryption standards – Ensuring all company data is encrypted in transit and when at rest. G Suite provides the ability to encrypt company data on GCP storage services such as Persistent Disk, Cloud SQL, BigQuery, Datastore, and Spanner databases; G Suite email content (Gmail); GSuite Drive files (including Team Drives), and Google Calendar events.

Requiring encryption keys management

This enables administrators to manage encryption keys which ensures that they can never leave their control or be exposed outside of their organization’s firewalls even if a breach occurs, so sensitive information will remain secure even if it falls into unauthorized hands.

Managing administrator privileges

G Suite includes several features designed for preventing breaches through inappropriately privileged accounts including Role-based access controls that enable G Suite administrators to control which G Suite resources can be accessed by individual G Suite users to account and groups of G Suite accounts. For example, if a GCP customer wants to ensure that their end-users cannot access billing data from within Google Cloud Console, they could configure the service so only those who have been assigned a specific administrator role or roles will see this information in an activity report page.

Protecting G Suite APIs

G Suite admins should take steps to protect against unauthorized API requests made outside of company firewalls including Whitelist IP addresses – Configure your firewall rule set with approved sources for authorized traffic such as internal employee requests. Require secure connections – Ensure all external clients using non- protocols are required to use TLS to encrypt traffic between the G Suite API and client application. Disable unnecessary APIs – G Suite admins should disable any G Suite services which are not being used by a company’s users.

Protecting data transfer

GCP customers need to take steps to ensure that their sensitive information is protected against unauthorized access during storage, transportation or backup operations including Enforcing encryption standards – Admins can enable G suite service-to-service communications with DLP policies for Gmail messages, Google Drive files, and other customer data stored in cloud services such as BigQuery, Cloud Datastore and Cloud Spanner databases. This ensures that all personally identifiable information will be encrypted before it leaves your organization’s boundaries even if intercepted while en route to its destination within GCP. G Suite controls also allow for fine-grained control over encryption policies by GCP services. These include support for G suite service-to-service communications with DLP policy enforcement, which ensures that all PII including credit card numbers is encrypted when transmitted between G Suite apps or Cloud Platform services.

Setting up two-factor authentication

Administrators can require their users to provide a second form of identity verification whenever they sign into G Suite using strong customer passwords and before accessing sensitive information such as financial reports or personal employee records. Domain level auditing – Administrators should regularly audit user activity in order to see who has accessed specific files and email messages sent within an organization’s domain(s). This helps admins quickly assess the scope of a breach and provide information to G Suite support.

Independent audits

GCP undergoes regular independent third-party security certifications, including SOC I Type II Certification for G Suite Enterprise Edition from the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) and ISO/IEC 27001:2013 certification for Google’s shared infrastructure services such as compute, storage, and networking which help protect customer data stored in G suite or cloud databases against unauthorized access.

Data encryption at rest

Administrators should encrypt all sensitive GSuite account data such as Gmail messages sent within an organization’s domain(s), Drive files containing personally identifiable information, Team Drives used by employees collaborating on specific projects; Calendar events containing meeting locations and attendees; Contacts records containing sensitive information such as names, email addresses, and phone numbers; G Suite user passwords stored in Cloud Datastore.

Conclusion:

Google Cloud is a powerful platform, but it has some security risks that you need to be aware of. The most common security risk in Google Cloud and offers solutions for each one that has to be detected and fixed. These are important considerations when choosing your cloud provider because they could impact how secure or accessible your data will be if something were to go wrong with their servers.

Taylor Gilbert is the admin and freelance writer at How About Tech since 2020. He primarily writes Tech articles, How-to guides and Entertainment as well.