Making Google Workspace Work for Your Business: Security, Compliance, and More

What are best practices for Google Workspace security?

Google Workspace ships with strong defaults, but the defaults assume that you’re running a small, trusting organization. Most real hardening happens in the Admin console and is turned off or permissive out of the box. The highest-value work concentrates in four areas:

1. Identity (phishing-resistant MFA and tight admin practices)
2. Data control (sharing defaults, DLP, and third-party app access)
3. Email authentication (SPF/DKIM/DMARC done properly)
4. Detection/retention (alerting, log export, and Vault).

Note that several of these controls are tier-gated. For example, DLP and context-aware access require Enterprise Standard/Plus, Frontline Standard/Plus, Education, or Enterprise Essentials Plus, though Drive and Chat DLP plus context-aware access can also be unlocked on Business tiers via the Cloud Identity Premium add-on. Meanwhile, enterprise endpoint management is Enterprise-only, and Vault starts at Business Plus. Therefore, a hardening plan must be checked against what’s actually available in your Google Workspace licensing tier.

Identity and access best practices in Google Workspace

• Enforce 2-Step Verification org-wide and move admins and executives to security keys or passkeys; SMS and voice codes are phishing-vulnerable and should be disallowed.
• Enroll high-risk users in the Advanced Protection Program.
• Keep at least two dedicated super-admin accounts with no mailbox, no mobile use, and unique passkeys; make everyday admin work happen from delegated roles instead.
• Use least-privilege admin roles rather than granting super-admin for convenience, and review role assignments quarterly.
• Set session length limits for Google services and require re-authentication for admin actions.
• Enable context-aware access to gate sessions on device state, IP, or geography (Enterprise tier).
• Disable less-secure app access and legacy protocols like IMAP/POP where the workflow doesn’t require them.

Data protection and sharing best practices in Google Workspace

• Set Drive sharing defaults to restricted, turn off “anyone with the link,” and require Google account sign-in for external access.
• Enable and review target-audience settings so “share with the whole company” doesn’t mean “share externally.”
• Configure DLP rules on the data that actually matters (PHI, PII, cardholder data, source code) and start in Audit Only mode before enforcing. Coverage spans Drive, Gmail, Chat, Calendar (beta), and Chrome. Gmail DLP requires an Enterprise-class edition; Drive and Chat DLP are also available to Business-tier clients who add Cloud Identity Premium, and Chrome DLP requires the Chrome Enterprise Premium add-on.
• Restrict third-party app and OAuth scope access using API controls; trust apps explicitly rather than allowing all. This is one of the most common security misconfigurations.
• Enable Drive Trust Rules or shared drive membership controls to keep external collaborators out of internal team drives.

Email security best practices in Google Workspace

• Publish SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records and move DMARC to p=reject after a monitoring period; DKIM is not enabled by default in Workspace and must be turned on per domain.
• Enable Gmail’s enhanced pre-delivery message scanning and protections for attachments, links, and spoofing in the Safety settings. Several of these are opt-in.
• Add external-sender warning banners.
• Restrict or monitor automatic forwarding to external addresses; this is a standard BEC persistence mechanism.
• Perform regular audits of delegation and mail routing rules. Attackers create quiet forwarding rules rather than obvious ones.

Endpoint and device security best practices in Google Workspace

• Require basic mobile management at minimum; use advanced endpoint management to enforce screen lock, encryption, and remote wipe (Plus and above).
• Set Chrome browser policies for managed profiles: forced updates, extension allowlists, and safe browsing enforcement.
• Block or restrict access from unmanaged devices for sensitive data.

Monitoring, retention, and response—best practices in Google Workspace

• Turn on admin alerts for suspicious login, admin privilege changes, and government-backed attack warnings, and route them to an actual human for review.
• Export audit logs to BigQuery or a SIEM; Workspace log retention is limited and insufficient for most incident investigations.
• Configure Vault retention and holds to match the organization’s regulatory obligations (Plus and above).
• Use the Security Investigation Tool for hunting and bulk remediation (Enterprise tier).
• Document and rehearse an account-compromise runbook: reset, revoke sessions and OAuth tokens, check forwarding rules and filters, and review Drive sharing changes.

Governance best practices in Google Workspace

• Run the Security Health Check page in the Admin console on a schedule, not just at onboarding.
• Formalize offboarding: suspend rather than delete, transfer Drive ownership, revoke tokens, and use archived-user licenses where retention is required.
• Conduct monthly reviews of external sharing reports and third-party app grants.

How do we set up DLP in Google Workspace?

Setting up DLP in Google Workspace is primarily a scoping project. The console work is straightforward, but building rules without knowing what data you actually hold can generate noise that admins learn to ignore. Therefore, it’s important to get the scope right before you configure and enable DLP.  

Rules are created in the Admin console under Rules → Create rule → Data protection. They can cover Drive, Gmail, Chat, Calendar (in beta), and Chrome, each with its own trigger event.

When it comes to DLP, the supported Google Workspace editions are Enterprise Standard and Plus, Frontline Standard and Plus, Education Fundamentals/Standard/Plus, and Enterprise Essentials Plus. That said, Drive DLP and Chat DLP are also available to Cloud Identity Premium users who hold a Workspace license, and Chrome DLP requires the Chrome Enterprise Premium add-on.

Smaller organizations should take note of Cloud Identity Premium and the path it offers for achieving DLP. A Business Plus organization can get Drive and Chat DLP without a full Enterprise upgrade, though Gmail DLP still requires Enterprise.

Before enabling DLP in Google Workspace

• Inventory what sensitive data actually exists and where, such as PHI, PII, cardholder data, contract terms, source code, and credentials. Rules written against a guess can misfire or create meaningless noise down the road.
• Map the regulatory driver (HIPAA, PCI DSS, CMMC, GLBA, state privacy law) to specific data types, so each rule traces back to an obligation.
• Confirm edition and licensing coverage, including whether Cloud Identity Premium is the cheaper route to Drive/Chat coverage.
• Identify legitimate business flows that will look like violations, such as billing sending claims data or HR sending SSNs to a benefits broker. Plan exemptions before enforcement begins.
• Decide who owns alert triage. DLP without a named owner can create its own set of problems.

Building the rules for DLP in Google Workspace

• Verify the admin has the View and Manage DLP rule privileges; rule creation is privileged and typically restricted to super admins.
• Scope each rule to an org unit or group rather than the whole domain on the first pass. Start with the departments that touch regulated data.
• Choose the apps and trigger events deliberately. Drive scans files owned by users, Gmail scans messages sent by users, and Chat scans messages and uploaded files, while Chrome scans actions like uploads.
• Turn on OCR where scanned documents matter. A faxed lab result or a photographed check is invisible to text-only scanning, which is a common gap in healthcare and financial clients.
• Use Google’s predefined detectors for standard types (SSN, credit card, passport). Build custom detectors with regex or word lists for client-specific identifiers like member IDs, matter numbers, or part numbers.
• Layer conditions rather than relying on a single match. A rule that fires on any nine-digit number will drown you; requiring proximity to a keyword or a minimum match count cuts false positives sharply.
• Set severity levels per rule so triage can prioritize. Enable Alert Center notifications on the rules that warrant a human response.

Rolling out DLP in Google Workspace

• Start every rule in Audit Only. Let it run for two to four weeks and review what it catches before it blocks anything.
• Tune against the audit findings. Expect the first pass to be mostly false positives. Also prepare for at least one legitimate workflow you didn’t know about.
• Escalate enforcement in stages: audit → warn the user → block external sharing → block entirely. Warning actions with custom messaging double as user education.
• Write the warning text in plain language that names the policy and the safe alternative. Generic blocks often train users to route around the control.
• Combine DLP with context-aware access where available to gate on device posture, location, or IP, so the same content is treated differently from a managed laptop than from an unmanaged personal device.

Operating DLP in Google Workspace

• Review DLP events in the Security Investigation Tool and Alert Center on a set cadence, not ad hoc.
• Grant the “view sensitive content” privilege only to admins who need to see matched snippets during triage.
• Export DLP and audit logs to a SIEM or BigQuery for retention beyond Workspace’s native window.
• Re-review rules quarterly and after any new system, vendor, or line of business. DLP can drift out of date faster than other security controls.
• Track a false-positive rate as an operational metric. A rising rate is the leading indicator that admins are about to stop reading the alerts.

How do we back up Google Workspace?

Google operates a shared responsibility model in which they keep the platform running and protect against infrastructure failure. Meanwhile, protecting your data from accidental deletion, malicious insiders, compromised accounts, and ransomware is the customer’s job.

Native tooling doesn’t close that gap. Vault handles retention, legal hold, and eDiscovery rather than restore. Meanwhile, Takeout and the admin Data Export tool produce manual, point-in-time archives with no automation or granular recovery. Trash and version-history windows are short and time-bound, so once they lapse, the data is gone.

The practical answer is a third-party cloud-to-cloud backup platform (Backupify/Datto, Acronis, Spanning, CloudAlly, Keepit, SpinOne, MSP360, Veeam, AvePoint) authorized through Google’s APIs. The solution should be configured to run automated daily backups of Gmail, Drive and Shared Drives, Calendar, and Contacts into infrastructure independent of the production tenant, with immutable copies, separate admin credentials, retention set to the client’s regulatory requirement rather than Google’s default window.

The last step, which many organizations never perform, is periodic restore testing. It’s essential to conduct this on a regular cadence, since an untested backup is an assumption rather than a true control.