Google Cloud Platform Security

Following Google’s announcement today of new security features for the Google Cloud Platform, with the intent of giving businesses more control over their security environment, IT security experts commented below.

Anthony James, Chief Marketing Officer at CipherCloud:

“Cloud adoption is ramping rapidly and the adoption of cloud-based applications has entered the mainstream. Each cloud vendor has a variety of cloud controls, but this gets very complicated as enterprises scale their applications across multiple clouds.

As we saw very recently with the Amazon cloud breaches involving Walmart and then subsequently with Federal Express, your data may be exposed due to human error or other unforeseen factors using any vendor. It remains essential to deploy a single unified cloud security platform that can secure enterprise data using encryption. Using tools such as cloud access security brokers (also called cloud gateways) you can encrypt data within applications, and in the event of a breach of the data within Google, Amazon or Microsoft Azure your data will remain protected. These same capabilities are also part of the critical infrastructure larger enterprise needs to address challenging compliance regulations such as GDPR.”

Mark James, Security Specialist at ESET:

Should companies still use additional security, on top of what Google of offering, to protect against cyber threats?

“The fine art of cyber defence relies on multi-layered techniques designed to integrate and strengthen your security. Long gone are the days of a single magic bullet that will keep you safe from malicious intent. From my point of view anything that can be done by the “tech giants” to not only protect the individuals and their brands is a plus. If your able to add to your security to compliment what they are doing then “go for it”. As much as we like others to do all the hard work, we need to do what we can to protect our own data, over and above what’s provided by default.”

Do you think the move will encourage more tech giants to follow suit and offer additional security controls for their customers?

“Yes, well I hope so. In this competitive world companies will need to keep up. Offering something that protects or enhances the user experience will encourage more to take up those services, and even more so as we move towards GDPR and beyond. Having a choice of companies and services only enhances the users security and encourages other companies to keep up and develop and grow their own services they offer.”

Do you see this as a positive step from Google?

“Yes absolutely, the user needs all the help they can get and being able to utilise the expertise and knowledge of Google will only enhance their ability to protect their data, that has sadly become the modern day “gold at the end of the rainbow”.”