Posted by Kiran Nair, Product Manager, Chrome Browser

1. Bring Chrome under Cloud Management

Your journey towards keeping your Google Workspace users and data safe, starts with bringing your Chrome browsers under Cloud Management at no additional cost. Chrome Browser Cloud Management is a single destination for applying Chrome Browser policies and security controls across Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS and Android. You also get deep visibility into your browser fleet including which browsers are out of date, which extensions your users are using and bringing insight to potential security blindspots in your enterprise.

Managing Chrome from the cloud allows Google Workspace admins to enforce enterprise protections and policies to the whole browser on fully managed devices, which no longer requires a user to sign into Chrome to have policies enforced. You can also enforce policies that apply when your managed users sign in to Chrome browser on any Windows, Mac, or Linux computer (via Chrome Browser user-level management) –not just on corporate managed devices.

This enables you to keep your corporate data and users safe, whether they are accessing work resources from fully managed, personal, or unmanaged devices used by your vendors.

Getting started is easy. If your organization hasn’t already, check out this guide for steps on how to enroll your devices.

2. Enforce built-in protections against Phishing, Ransomware & Malware

Chrome uses Google’s Safe Browsing technology to help protect billions of devices every day by showing warnings to users when they attempt to navigate to dangerous sites or download dangerous files. Safe Browsing is enabled by default for all users when they download Chrome. As an administrator, you can prevent your users from disabling Safe Browsing by enforcing the SafeBrowsingProtectionLevel policy.

Over the past few years, we’ve seen threats on the web becoming increasingly sophisticated. Turning on Enhanced Safe Browsing will substantially increase protection from dangerous websites, malicious downloads and extensions. For the best protections against web based attacks Google has to offer, enforce Enhanced Safe Browsing for your users.

3. Enable Enterprise Credential Protections in Chrome

Enterprise password reuse introduces significant security risks. Quite often, employees reuse corporate credentials as personal logins and vice versa. Occasionally, employees even enter their corporate passwords into phishing websites. Reused employee logins give criminals easy paths to access corporate data.

Chrome Enterprise Password Reuse detection helps enterprises avoid identity theft and employee and organizational data breaches by detecting when an employee enters their corporate credentials into any other website.

Google Password Manager in Chrome also has a built-in Password Checkup feature that alerts users when Google discovers a username and password has been exposed in a public data breach.

Password alerts are surfaced in Audit Logs and Security Investigation Tool which helps admins create automated rules or take appropriate steps to mitigate this by asking users to reset their passwords.

4. Gain insights into critical security events via Audit Logs, Google Security Center or your SIEM of choice

IT teams can gain useful insights about potential security threats and events that your Google Workspace users are encountering when browsing the web using Chrome. IT teams can take preventive measures against threats through Security Reporting.

In the Google Workspace Admin console, organizations can enroll their Chrome browser and get detailed information about their browser deployment. IT teams can also set policies, manage extensions, and more. The Chrome management policies can be set to work alongside any end user-based policies that may be in place.

Once you’ve enabled Security events reporting (pictured above), you can then view reporting events within audit logs. Google Workspace Enterprise Plus or Education Plus users can use the Workspace Security Investigation Tool to identify, triage, and act on potential security threats.

As of today, Chrome can report on when users:

• Navigate to a known malicious site.
• Download or upload files containing known malware.
• Reuse corporate passwords on non-approved sites.
• Change corporate passwords after reusing them on non-approved sites.
• Install extensions.

In addition to Google Workspace, you can also export these events into other Google Cloud products, such as Google Cloud Pub/Sub, Chronicle, or leading 3rd party products such as Splunk, Crowdstrike and PaloAlto Networks.

5. Mitigate risk by keeping your browsers up to date with latest security updates

Modern web browsers, like any other software, can have “zero day” vulnerabilities, which are undiscovered flaws in the software that can be exploited by attackers until they are identified and resolved. Fortunately, among all the browsers, Chrome is known to patch zero day vulnerabilities quickly. However, to take advantage of this, the IT team has to ensure that all browsers within the browser environment are up-to-date. Our enterprise tools provide a smooth and seamless browser update process, enabling user productivity while maintaining optimal security. By leveraging these tools, businesses can ensure their users are safe and protected from potential security threats.

• Version Report: Easily see all the versions of Chrome in your fleet across various operating systems in a daily report.
• Force Auto Updates in Chrome: Trigger updates to newer versions of Chrome as soon as they’re available. Force users to relaunch Chrome to take updates more rapidly using enterprise policies. This keeps users on the latest version of Chrome, with the latest security fixes.
• Controlling legacy browser usage: Some users continue to need access to old web applications that use plugins and ActiveX technology not supported by modern browsers. Legacy Browser Support functionality is integrated into Chrome, and reduces the time users spend with less secure browsers.

6. Ensure employees only use vetted extensions

Extensions pose a large security risk. Many extensions request powerful permissions that if misused, could lead to security breaches or data loss. However, due to strong end user demand, it’s often not possible to fully block the installation of extensions.

• Apps & Extensions usage report: Provides visibility into every Chrome extension that is installed across an enterprise’s fleet. Admins can force install or block any extension across any segment of their fleet.
• Extensions workflow: Admins can decide under which circumstances an extension install needs to be reviewed by IT. A review workflow in the Google Admin console makes it easy for admins to review and approve install requests for specific users requesting an extension, or for their broader fleet.
• Extensions details: Admins can see additional details about an extension’s permissions, and other relevant metadata. This info is surfaced in the Extensions list and Extensions workflow pages to make it easier for administrators to manage extensions.

7. Ensure your Google Workspace resources are only accessed from Managed Chrome Browsers with protections enabled

Context-Aware Access ensures only the right people, under the right conditions, access confidential information. Using Context-Aware Access, you can create granular access control policies for apps that access Workspace data based on attributes, such as user identity, location, device security status, and IP address.

To ensure that your Google Workspace resources are only accessed from managed Chrome browsers with protection enabled, you create custom access levels in Advanced mode, using Common Expressions Language (CEL). Learn more about managed queries in this help center article.

8. Enable BeyondCorp Enterprise Threat and Data Protections

For the organizations that want to take an even more proactive approach to data security, they can deploy BeyondCorp Enterprise to protect their information and enable data loss prevention (including control over upload, download, print, save, copy and paste), real-time phishing protection, malware deep scanning, and Zero Trust access to SaaS applications. Since BeyondCorp Enterprise is already built into Chrome, organizations can frictionlessly implement it without having to install additional agents.

Learn more about how Google supports today’s workforce with secure enterprise browsing here.

Posted by Michael Spaulding, Senior Product Manager, Ad Traffic Quality

With the conflict in Ukraine passing the one-year mark, have its cyber-war elements turned out as expected?

The post One year on, how is the war playing out in cyberspace? – Week in security with Tony Anscombe appeared first on WeLiveSecurity

Posted by Eugene Liderman, Director of Mobile Security Strategy, Google

As Mobile World Congress approaches, we have the opportunity to have deep and meaningful conversations across the industry about the present and future of connected device security. Ahead of the event, we wanted to take a moment to recognize and share additional details on the notable progress being made to form harmonized connected device security standards and certification initiatives that provide users with better transparency about how their sensitive data is protected.

Supporting the GSMA Working Party for Mobile Device Security Transparency

We’re pleased to support and participate in the recently announced GSMA working party, which will develop a first-of-its-kind smartphone security certification program. The program will leverage the Consumer Mobile Device Protection Profile (CMD PP) specification released by ETSI, a European Standards Development Organization (SDO), and will provide a consistent way to evaluate smartphones for critical capabilities like encryption, security updates, biometrics, networking, trusted hardware, and more.

This initiative should help address a significant gap in the market for consumers and policy makers, who will greatly benefit from a new, central security resource. Most importantly, these certification programs will evaluate connected devices across industry-accepted criteria. Widely-used devices, including smartphones and tablets, which currently do not have a familiar security benchmark or system in place, will be listed with key information on device protection capabilities to bring more transparency to users.

We hope this industry-run certification program can also benefit users and support policy makers in their work as they address baseline requirements and harmonization of standards.As policy makers consider changes through regulation and legislation, such as the UK’s Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Act (PSTI), and emerging regulation like the EU Cyber Security and Cyber Resilience Acts, we share the concerns that today we are not equipped with globally recognized standards that are critical to increased security across the ecosystem. We join governments in the call to come together to ensure that we can build workable, harmonized standards to protect the security of users and mobile infrastructure today and build the resilience needed to protect our future.

The Importance of Harmonized Standards for Connected Devices

Connected devices, not just smartphones, are increasingly becoming the primary touchpoint for the most important aspects of our personal lives. From controlling the temperature of your home, to tracking your latest workout – connected devices have become embedded in our day-to-day tasks and activities. As consumers increasingly entrust more of their lives to their connected devices, they’re right to question the security protections provided and demand more transparency from manufacturers.

After we participated in a recent White House Workshop on IoT security labeling, we shared more about our commitment to security and transparency by announcing the extension of device security assessments – which started with Pixel 3 and now includes Nest, and Fitbit hardware. We have and always will strive to ensure our newly released products comply with the most prevalent security baselines that are defined by industry-recognized standards organizations. We will also remain transparent about critical security features – like how long our devices will receive security updates and our collaboration with security researchers that help us identify and fix security issues to help keep users safe.

By participating in international standards and certification programs such as our work as a member of the Connectivity Standards Alliance (Alliance), we’re working to raise the bar for the industry and develop a consistent set of security requirements that users can rely on.

New Research Continues to Help Inform Our Efforts to Establish Strong Security Standards and Labeling Practices

Last year, the Alliance formed the Product Security Working Group (PSWG). Over the past nine months, the working group has been making terrific progress on its mission to build an industry-run certification program for IoT devices that aligns with existing and future regulatory requirements to reduce fragmentation and promote harmonization.

Today, the Alliance in partnership with independent research firm Omdia, published a comprehensive research report that outlines all of the currently published and emerging global IoT security regulations and the standards baselines they map to. This critical research enables PSWG to hone its focus and efforts on harmonizing between ETSI EN 303 645 and NIST IR 8425, as these two baseline security standards were found to underpin the vast majority of the regulations outlined in the research report.

The other notable area of the report highlighted the need for transparent security labeling for connected devices, which has also become a very important industry initiative. A large majority (77%) of consumers surveyed indicated a device label that explains the privacy and security practices of the manufacturer would be important or very important to their purchasing decision. Transparent security labeling is critical in helping consumers understand which devices meet specific security standards and requirements during evaluation. We recently provided our principles for IoT security labeling and will continue to be a key contributor to efforts around providing users with transparent device security labels.

Creating Strong Connected Device Security Standards Together

It’s been inspiring to see all of the progress that the Connectivity Standards Alliance, GSMA and the industry at large has made on security standards and labeling initiatives in such a short time. It’s even more exciting to see how much collaboration there has been between both industry and the public sector on these efforts. We look forward to continuing the conversation and coordinating on these important security initiatives with policymakers, industry partners, developers and public interest advocates to bring more security and transparency to connected device users.