Google's G Suite of business apps is fast becoming mature enough to provide effective solutions for mid-market and large businesses to collaborate and innovate. The rebranded suite (formerly Google Apps for Work) allows any organization to boost productivity and comes in two variants: Basic and Business. G Suite Business is the premium edition that offers access to all apps available in Basic in addition to Google Vault and unlimited storage. Most importantly G Suite Business comes with an array of audit and reporting features as well as Drive administration capabilities.
Some of the key benefits of using G Suite editions include:
By opting for G Suite Basic, you take advantage of shared calendars, video meetings through Google Hangouts, cloud-based storage, online documents, email and much more. The productivity suite provides a wide variety of functionality that includes:
G Suite Business extends functionality to include additional features and controls, such as Google Vault and domain-wide admin managed security keys. Selecting this edition allows you to take advantage of unlimited storage in Drive, Photos and Gmail. This eliminates the need to constantly delete files or worry about space. It becomes easier to save time.
Some the administrative functions available in the Business suite include:
This feature allows administrators to view all user events on iOS and Android devices. The auditing process is only applicable to users with a G Suite Business license for the device. The audit logs require you to set up mobile device management. Some of the events that can be viewed in the logs include device compromise, suspicious activity, changes to account registration, failed login attempts and more.
Vault is designed to provide a convenient way to find, hold and export chat as well as mail messages. This web-based feature offers a number of eDiscovery services that include:
The Drive audit log provides an easy way to monitor user activity in Drive. Some of the actions logged in the audit reports include content downloads, previews, deletions, views and sharing. The log in the Admin console allows you to view details, such as event description, file type, IP address, user, event name and user.
The audit log features a filters section that provides an easy way to display events based on specific criteria. The section gives you an opportunity to create and configure custom alerts.
With G Suite Business, you can scan both inbound and outbound email traffic using data loss prevention. When you detect sensitive content like social security numbers and credit card, you simply set policy-based actions. Some of the available response actions include altering the message, quarantine or rejection.
Setting predefined controls in the content compliance section ensures that all messages are evaluated. The evaluation process automatically scans attachments, email subject and message body. It is possible to set varying policies for specific users. Opting to set a higher detection threshold is a sure-fire way to reduce the number of false positives and negatives.
The content compliance setting also detects different types of content with varying levels of confidence. Using a checksum and well-defined pattern helps scan and detect credit card numbers with relatively higher confidence. Meanwhile, the setting only achieves medium confidence detection levels in relation to ABA routing numbers.
The choice of G Suite edition is determined by your organization's specific operational requirements. The premium version is ideal for entities seeking more storage, administrative control and reporting features.