Google has announced a series of new updates that bring even stronger security to Gmail, Meet, and Chat in an effort to help people who work from home stay safe. To secure the entire Gmail ecosystem, the search giant has announced the pilot project of its new Brand Indicators for Message Identification (BIMI) standard. The BIMI pilot will allow organizations, which authenticate their emails using DMARC, to validate ownership of their company logos and securely transmit them to Google. After these authenticated emails have passed Google's anti-abuse checks, Gmail will begin displaying an organization's logo in the service's avatar slot to let users know these emails are coming from directly. 'a company and not someone who usurped them. Google will begin its BIMI pilot project in the coming weeks with a limited number of senders. Certificate authorities from Entrust Datacard and DigiCert will also work with the company to validate ownership of the logo. To prepare for the official release of BIMI in the coming months, Google recommends that organizations start adopting DMARC now if they haven't already.
Discover the security controls
Google also announced that it will implement new security controls for Google Meet in the coming weeks to ensure that only intended participants can join video conferences. During the initial launch, these new options will first be available for consumer and G Suite for Education accounts. First, Google gives meeting planners more control over who can "touch" and join their meetings. Once a participant is kicked out of a meeting, they will not be able to try to join the same meeting again by calling in unless the host invites them again. Also, if a user's keystroke request has been denied multiple times, the user will automatically be prevented from sending any further requests to join the meeting. Google also offers hosts advanced security locks to help better protect meetings with just a few clicks. With these new security locks, hosts can decide how a user can join a meeting and even require users to get explicit approval to join. By enabling security blocks, hosts will prevent any anonymous user who isn't signed in with a Google account from trying to join their meetings. There are also specific security locks that allow the host to control how meeting participants interact. For example, chat lock and presentation lock will allow hosts to control which participants can chat and present during the meeting. The new features announced for Google Meet will come in handy as schools and universities plan to reopen digitally in the fall.