Gmail’s new security features just might save you from getting fired one day

Google Apps for Work Unlimited customers can now benefit from better attachment scanning in Gmail that uses optical character recognition to check before sensitive document copies or images are sent out of your company via email.

Google’s Data Loss Prevention (DLP) launched late last year to automatically check all outgoing emails as per policies set up by your company admin and this new scanning feature can now be turned on in the backend.

There are also now some additional, customizable parameters for assessing the risk of content within your company email system, including one that counts the volume of Personally Identifiable Information contained in an email before flagging it to admins.

Indeed, someone at Snapchat could probably have done with this exact tool just a few days ago. Perhaps the best news from Google on this is that all of its DLP tools will be coming to Drive later this year.

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In a blog post that demonstrates where security appears in the innovation pecking order, compared to where it probably should do, Gerhard Eschelbeck, VP of Security and Privacy Engineering at Google, said:

When we think about innovation at Google, most of us think about balloons delivering wireless access or driverless cars. But for many years, we’ve been innovating at scale with security as well. Google has a long history of accelerating innovation and facilitating the adoption of new technology — like two-step verification (2SV), Security Keys, SSL encryption and even removing spam in email. Remember when spam was going to cripple email in the 90’s? Today, spam is down to less than 0.1% for the average Gmail user — one of the earliest and finest examples of applying massive computing power and machine learning to solve a big security challenge.

Sure, it won’t fly and it won’t work without a driver, but given the scale at which Google’s enterprise infrastructure has been adopted by business and individuals alike, you’d really feel it if it crashed.

➤ More innovation brings more security so for today, let’s raise the bar with Gmail DLP [Google]