Google Workspace a CISO guide to how it's ransomware resistant
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Many CIO & CISOs believe that Google Workspace & Microsoft 365 are the same; let's explore why that's wrong
Our vCIO on:
Think Differently
The Writely approach to collaboration
Writely was the brainchild of three developers, Claudia Carpenter, Steve Newman & Sam Schillace all from a little startup (back then) called, Intuit — the maker of Quickbooks to Quicken, now owner of Mailchimp & Credit Karma.
These three developed a system, that had a host of challenges. A collaborative document editor.
Bill Gates said in 2006, "Text controls and WordPad have more features than Writely".
Claudia said. Um, duh. Writely was a poster child for Web 2.0 — ushering in a new era of Cloud apps.
Today, Google Doc's users base surpases Microsoft Word by a user count of over one billion: 1,000,000,000
Think Cloud
Microsoft 365 is more Network Attached Storage, than Cloud-Native.
It's no secret that to get full functionality of Office, you need to download locally installed software.
This is outlined by Microsoft itself in many tutorials and product functionality setups.
This focus on full funcinality being delivered by local installs, dependent on every device having a locally managed, and locally installed software, is why Microsoft 365 is not considered a cloud native platform. Instead, it focuses on a hybrid approach.
Where there is no option to install an application to get more feature functionality of Google Docs, due to its cloud native design of cloud only.
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Think DLP
Data Loss & Prevention made easy.
Protecting files can be hard, but protecting legacy files, is nearly impossible.
As the video at the top of this page outlines what I call "String Methodology"™ for understanding how these differences work.
Microsoft 365 focuses on features, and enabling them on a local install level. This is enabled by local installs of Microsoft Word, for instance.
Word operates in it's own file format, call ".docx" which is based off of the Extensible Markup Language. This allows Microsoft Word, to read, edit, and build the files we see.
However, these files within Microsoft 365 are stored in a variety of methods.
1: our local hard drives
2: synced to our Microsoft OneDrive
3: synced to our Microsoft SharePoint
*Bonus: a floppy disk!
This list is not all encompassing, but you get the idea, there are multiple methods to storing these files.
Google Workspace however, is centralized to the Google Cloud Platform, maintaining files only within data centers that are maintained by Google.
This is seen within the video, and how files are not allowed to escape Google Cloud.
Google Native files, are never stored on device
This means, Data Loss & Prevention, is simplified for organizations running Google Workspace.
Think CSRD
Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive — (CSRD)
At my last organization as CIO over North America, we were owned by a EU organization and would be falling under the upcoming CSRD requierments.
For those of you unaware, each and every user who creates a text document, is creating a CO2 footprint. That CO2, needs to be tracked & reported on for the CSRD.
Due to the cloud tied nature of Workspace, every time you connect to the file, through the server on Google Cloud, it's logged.
This makes CO2 reporting easy!
Even if I share a file, you're connecting to it via the internet, and thus, a log has been established, meaning every shared file is seen, logged, and CO2 is known.
Within Microsoft 365, and the fact that files are often created locally, tracking & knowing CO2 contributions is a very tricky ordeal.
This is why where Google Workspace gives exact CO2 measurements, Microsoft has to guess and estimate CO2 for users.
You might even start to see where we are going to explain why Google Workspace is not affected by Ransomware in the next section.
Think Ransomware
Ransomware deprives you access to files
As a CISO or CIO, you likely know how Ransomware works. It seeks to deprive you access to your files, stealing the data in the process, and ensure that your files can then be sold off if a ransome is not paid so a profit is still made for the gangs efforts.
As we have already covered, Google Workspace native files, are never stored on the device locally.
A "file" you might sync with Google Drive, is essentially a bookmark with the URL & document # for that specific file within the Google Cloud platform.
Ransomware exercise you can try!
Try bookmarking this page, and save it to your desktop.
A simple way to emulate a file deprivation is to compress the file.
Now, check this page, is it gone?
No, because you don't have access to this websites data!
This framework extends to Google Files, and why they are not affected by a device encrypting the local bookmark.
Should a file be downloaded for "offline" access, it is tied & already encrypted, into the users Chrome browser user profile.
This is unlike Microsoft 365, which specifically states within OneDrive documentation, to halt OneDrive or SharePoint file syncing should a device become infected by ransomware.
This is due to the fact that the files are stored within the local formats, and synchronized across local devices.
Not too dissimilar from a NAS setup.
This is why, Google Workspace files, are designed to not get ransomware.
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