Securing your data and your customers with Google Cloud

Google Cloud can help your business protect its systems and data, minimising risk and positioning itself for success.

The pressure during the coronavirus pandemic to push business online is accelerating digital transformation, but also placing added stress on security controls.  Traditional perimeter-based network security models – already increasingly irrelevant in the era of cloud and mobility – are no longer an option for organisations. 

As more and more workloads shift to the cloud and workers demand access to systems and data anywhere from any location, businesses are under pressure to implement multi-layered, zero-trust security approaches. 

However, for many businesses, taking such an approach can be costly and resource-intensive. They may have to allocate budget intended for transformation and strategy to preventing system intrusion, disruption and compromise. They may need to engage or recruit expensive security specialists to help minimise risk and address the rapidly evolving threat landscape. 

Furthermore, they need to know that the security controls they have in place are working as designed – a certification process that can be expensive and laborious. They also face the challenge of complying with a raft of global and industry standards, as well as internal governance requirements and expectations.   

However, cloud providers are already ahead of the game, with decades’ worth of skills, expertise and investment in security protecting systems, infrastructure – and customers.  Testing and certification work done by default, so our customers can benefit from having that certification in hand without having to do it themselves.

At Google Cloud, we provide comprehensive security protections to customer workloads. We layer security through everything from configurations that use verified code to user identity, storage and operations. 

We also undertake testing and certification work by default, so customers can leverage our work to improve their compliance.

Businesses worldwide recognise how effectively our security tools and processes can protect their data. Akhil Gupta, Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of AI-powered real estate platform, NoBroker, says, “From a security standpoint, the biggest benefit of Google Cloud is that our data sits in a virtual private cloud. We can effectively limit risk exposure to public IP addresses and endpoints.”

Moving beyond VPN

The surge in remote working during the pandemic also throws into sharp relief the need to move beyond traditional VPN technologies to minimise performance bottlenecks. Google Cloud’s zero-trust BeyondCorp service enables customers to make encrypted connections without a VPN, and uses hardware keys to provide strong second factor authentication for user identity. 

Encryption of data stored on cloud platforms can be costly, often attracting extra licensing fees and requiring detailed planning. Google Cloud encrypts data at rest, in transit and, in some cases, in memory and during processing through confidential computing.

In addition, data in Google Cloud travels globally on Google’s private fibre network, minimizing hops across the public internet. Google Cloud also provides the ability to encrypt data sent by customers to its network, depending on the technologies used.

Google Cloud also works with customers every day to manage compliance requirements such as PCI/DSS, ISO certifications and APRA compliance, helping them meet their data security and protection obligations. 

Learn more here about Google Cloud’s advanced security and how can protect business systems and data

Supplied by Google

About Kate Healy: 

Kate works with the Chief Information Security Officers of Australia’s largest organisations to understand their cyber strategies and advise on industry trends and innovations with a focus on the adoption of cloud. Kate brings to Google over two decades’ global experience of helping organisations better understand and reduce their cyber risks. Kate is a passionate advocate of educating businesses in cyber security with pragmatic risk considerations. She is a Fellow of the Australian Information Security Association.