Google Apps takes care of your data both at the physical and at the environmental level. But you can make your cloud security even stronger with the variety of tools that can be set up by the domain administrator. I will reveal some of these tools in this article. The most reliable is to use Google Apps for business backup tool, but let’s be coherent and view all of them in a row.
2-factor authentication
Google Apps has a 2-factor authentication option which is usually called “2-step verification”. This feature can greatly enhance the user’s data safety and prevent the outsiders from breaking into the user’s account. The idea is that to log in to your Google Apps account you first need to type your own password and after that another one which consists only of numbers generated by a special app on your mobile phone or sent to you via sms.
Single Sign-On (SSO)
Google Apps gives the Single Sign–On (SSO) function to clients that use Google Apps for Business, Google Apps for Education or and Google Apps for ISPs. GApps has a SAML–based SSO API that admins can integrate into their LDAP, or other SSO system. It allows administrators to use any authentication mechanism that they like, such as certificates, hardware tokens, biometrics, and other features.
Password Length and Strength
Google Apps administrators can set up password length requirements for their domain users and disallow the users to set up the passwords that do not meet them.
Administrator–based Single Sign-Out
Administrators can reset a user’s sign–in cookies so as not to let any outsider log into the user’s account. The user will be logged out from his current browser sessions and asked for the new authentication to be able to log in.
If you combine this feature with allowing administrators to change the users’ passwords then you could significantly increase your Google Apps account security.
Secure Browser Connections (HTTPS)
Google Apps for Business and Google Apps for Education allow domain administrators to force all users in their domain to use Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) for such services as Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, Google Sites, etc. This protocol encrypts all the data that leaves Google account until it reaches the recipient.
Google Apps for business backup tools
All the features mentioned above protect your GApps account from the outsiders. But they cannot protect you from yourself or from the people you share your data with. So the best way to ensure your cloud data security is to use Google Apps for business backup tools like Upsafe. Sign up for our app and get fully-functional trial for 30 days.