Previously known as G Suite, Google Workspace is a suite of cloud-based productivity and collaboration tools that integrates services such as Gmail, Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Calendar, Meet, offering a unified solution for businesses, educational institutions and individuals.
The Mountain View company, with the specific intent of strengthen security of its solution, announced the imminent introduction of a new feature in Workspace. Call Multi-party approvalconsists in the addition of a consent that must necessarily involve more administrators when changes were applied to higher risk settings.
Prevent unauthorized or accidental changes in Google Workspace with approval multi-party
Access to settings of Google Workspace via the Web interface represents an important advantage: administrators can intervene directly, ensuring that any changes are immediately applied to all users of the service (think of company employees and collaborators).
Some preferences that impact the general behavior of Workspace platform they are so important that the modifications applied cannot fail to be examined by several specialized technicians. Because, you know, when it comes to highly critical information two eyes are never enough.
Think of the far from uncommon situation in which an attacker manages to gain entry into the Workspace account of any company. Using the credentials others, they could spy on the company’s activity, steal confidential data, make changes and even take over the company’s account.
How multi-party approval introduced by Google works
Precisely with the aim of strengthening the perimeter of Google Workspace and allowing only interventions expressly approved by all administrators, the Mountain View company has officially presented the concept of Multi-party approval.
Going forward, for changes to Workspace dealing with two-step verification, account recovery, advanced protectionsession control, the “challenges” presented at login, the passwordless access mechanism, the Google platform will ask that individual changes be explicitly approved by individual company administrators.
In this way, any unauthorized or accidental modifications that could reduce security can be avoided compromise confidentiality, availability and integrity of company data. The system that manages approval requests is designed to be as least burdensome as possible for administrators and not to burden the volume of activities carried out on a daily basis.
“Multi-party approvals add an additional layer of security for sensitive actions performed in the admin console, ensuring that no intervention occurs in a silo and, most importantly, helps prevent unauthorized or accidental changes“, we read in Google’s announcement.
In the event of cyber attacks, criminals do not have an easy time because any actions that would compromise the entire Workspace would have to be expressly approved and authorized by multiple administrators.
Google specifies that the functionality Multi-party approval it is however deactivated for default setting. Businesses and professionals who wish to take advantage of it can act on the corresponding setting in the section Safety of Workspace.