Google Workspace customers, as well as former G Suite Basic and Business users, are getting a new update that has the potential to prevent major cybersecurity disasters.
Google announced in a blog post (opens in a new tab) that Workspace administrators will receive new notifications whenever "critical and sensitive" changes are made to their settings.
According to the post, these "intelligent alerts" will closely monitor various sensitive actions, helping administrators keep their environments in check and weeding out potentially malicious actions as soon as they emerge.
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Administrators can expect to be alerted when the primary administrator changes, when an SSO profile is added, updated, or deleted, and when the password is reset for super administrators.
For each alert, Google explained, administrators and super administrators will be notified by email, detailing key information about the event that took place.
The company plans to introduce alerts for other high-risk actions over time, though it did not specify what these actions might be.
The feature will roll out gradually, Google confirmed, adding that it began rolling it out to users on June 28.
If you're not happy about getting even more email notifications now, tough luck, because Google says they're on by default and "can't be turned off." End users should not be affected in any way by this change.
Administrator accounts are always in high demand by cybercriminals as they allow free roaming on target infrastructure and endpoints (Opens in a new tab). They also allow the ability to make any kind of change to the environment.
Since the Covid-19 pandemic and the shift to remote work, remote collaboration suites (opens in a new tab) like Google Workspace have become extremely popular and as such extremely attractive to threat actors, so is a welcome addition when it comes to cybersecurity.