Tips for Organizing & Securing Your Company's Google Drive

Thank goodness the days of messy filing cabinets and desks littered with stacks of papers are (mostly) behind us. Managing digital files and folders is much easier, cleaner, and more secure than dealing with paper. But if you work at a large or growing business that uses Google Drive, you've probably seen how digital file management can get out of control too.

If anyone at your organization has wasted time digging through Google Drive folders to try and find the right file, struggled to figure out which version of a file is the most up-to-date — or worse, lost access to an important file completely when a co-worker left the company — you're probably past due to develop a top-down strategy for Google Drive organization.

Why Google Drive Organization Matters

While individuals within your organization may have each figured out their own organizational strategy for Google Drive, that kind of scattershot approach still leaves a lot of room for problems. 

Creating a Google Drive management strategy at the organizational level is an important step in making sure that your team can consistently access the files they need to do their job and that your Drive data stays secure.

In particular, developing clear guidelines for Google Drive organization can help with:

• Improving productivity: When everyone in the organization has a standardized process for naming and storing files and folders, employees spend less time looking for the information they need, as well as setting up new projects. Over time, that can end up saving your employees a lot of time and frustration.
• Enabling appropriate file access: If your policy provides access at the folder and/or Shared Drive level, employees will automatically gain access to the files they need to do their jobs — meaning fewer instances of having to wait around for someone to grant them access. And when an employee leaves, you're much less likely to lose access to important documents that lived exclusively on an employee’s individual Drive.
• Avoiding duplicate files: Good Drive organization can also help you avoid the confusion of having duplicates of important files. Duplicate files are not only a waste of space, but can also waste time if different people unknowingly work in different versions of a file and have to take the extra step of consolidating the work after.
• Reducing data exposure risk: A strong Drive organizational strategy that includes clear guidelines around permissions and access rules will reduce data security risks. By establishing permissions at a higher level, you create less opportunity for user error in exposing files with sensitive information. And if access permissions are established for each file by default, employees are unlikely to accidentally share them with someone outside the organization or department.
  
  

Best Practices for Drive Folder Structure

A smart Drive folder structure won't just help you bring better organization to your workspace today, it also supports scalability. If each individual or department in your organization develops their own system (or tries to work without one), confusion and errors are inevitable. By clarifying standardized processes at the top, you can create a clean, secure system designed to seamlessly grow with your organization.

A few steps to help you get started right with Google Drive organization are:

1. Establish standardized folder guidelines across departments.

Having a standardized process for creating and using shared folders can help you manage access permissions more efficiently and intuitively, while also providing each department and team clear instructions on how to keep files organized.

The details of how best to organize your folders will depend on your organization's setup and particular needs. At many large organizations, that could mean having a primary shared folder for each department (e.g. one for HR, IT, marketing, etc.), along with specific subfolders for any departments or organizational units that fall under each one. 

Meanwhile, an agency may want to establish shared folders for each client, with subfolders within for each of the different projects and/or services relevant to the client. 

2. Set access at the folder level.

Google Workspace lets you set access at the folder level, which means you can make sure the right people have access to a set of relevant files in one step, rather than having to manage permissions manually for every file. 

Each new hire can immediately gain access to the information they need to do their jobs by simply being added to the relevant department file. And when someone leaves, removing their access can happen in one fell swoop, rather than requiring a lengthy and tedious process.

This is especially valuable for departments that need access to sensitive data to do their jobs effectively, like HR and accounts payable. You can ensure employees in specific roles can pull up the files they need to get their work done — even when those files include sensitive data — without creating unnecessary security risks.

3. Develop file-naming conventions.

If everyone is left to their own devices when naming files, you'll end up with a lot of variety and inconsistencies in file names. What's intuitive and obvious to one person won't be to everyone else. You don't want employees struggling to find a file because the filename a co-worker came up with doesn’t include any of the keywords they think to search.

Think about what naming conventions will make sense across the organization. Clarify what employees should include in each file name and in what order. You may want to include some variation of the following in your file names in a pre-established order:

• Department name (or abbreviation)
• Content name
• Project name
• Client name
• Date created or most recently modified
• Type of modification
• Version number

If you’re worried including all the important information will lead to unwieldy file names, you might want to re-think your folder structure. Good folder organization can lead to shorter, more intuitive file names. You won't have to include as much information in the file name itself if your folders are doing some of the work. 

For example, if a file will only be used by the HR department and it lives in that folder, you won't need to include the department name in the file itself. 

How to Manage File Sharing & Permissions

Data security is another key factor to keep top of mind in your Drive organization strategy. Without clear guidelines, some employees will default to making files available to "anyone with the link" — an option that makes sharing files with colleagues (within and outside the organization) easier, but that introduces security risks.

In fact, research from Metomic revealed that 34.2% of Google Drive business files are shared externally. There are a lot of cases where external sharing is beneficial, like when you work with contractors or other third parties who need access to your files to do their job. But it's imperative that employees are intentional about which files are shared externally, and cautious about who they share them with. 

Issuing clear policies about external sharing is an important part of that, but you can't always count on busy employees to keep guidelines top of mind. You should also make good use of Workspace's security settings and features to help enforce best practices. 

Some safeguards your IT team can deploy include:

• Putting restrictions on external sharing for files that include sensitive data. IT can configure the settings on certain files to ensure no one can share them without consulting IT first.
• Set up tiered, role-based sharing permissions based on employees' positions and responsibilities. That lets you skip having to configure permissions for each file individually, while helping you make sure files are only accessible to people in roles where the information is relevant.
• Make use of Google Workspace's reporting and notifications features to easily monitor when files are shared externally, so you confirm whether the permissions are necessary or present a security threat that should be locked down.
  
  

Staying on Top of Google Drive Organization

You've created a clear Google Drive organization strategy, communicated all policies to employees and implemented access restrictions on sensitive files and folders. Well done. You should be finished, right? Afraid not.

Getting everything in place is a great start, but maintaining good Google Drive organization is an ongoing process. To keep your Google Drive organized over time, plan to:

• Clearly communicate (and reiterate) guidelines: Employee education is an important component in consistent Drive organization, but employees have their own set of responsibilities. They may have good intentions to stick with the policy after they first learn about it, but if they never get reminders as the months or years pass, forgetting is inevitable  Make sure every employee has access to your policies in an accessible format, send occasional reminders to keep them top of mind, and enlist managers across departments to enforce adherence to the guidelines.
• Perform regular audits: Even with reminders, employees can let things slip. IT can keep things from getting out of control by using Workspace's auditing tools to keep an eye on Drive activity and access permissions for files across the organization. If someone's not following the guidelines, IT has the power to change security settings themselves to ensure compliance. They can then reach out to the department or individual to remind them of the proper way to do things.
  
  

Google Workspace Features that Help

Google Workspace offers admin tools you can use to assert control over Drive organization and gain visibility into overall compliance into your policies. In particular, consider making use of:

• Drive audit logs: Committing to regular audits may sound like a tedious and time-consuming undertaking, but Drive's audit logs can simplify the process. You can see at a glance who's been viewing, editing, and sharing files, and efficiently identify security vulnerabilities and compliance issues to be addressed.
• Data-loss prevention (DLP) rules: Identifying issues is good, but preventing them is better. Workspace lets you establish DLP rules that control what content employees are able to share outside of the organization. DLP can scan files for sensitive data like employees' personal information, customer credit card details, or client data covered by a non-disclosure agreement and block employees from sharing them with anyone unauthorized.
• Reports: Google Workspace's reporting features help you gain fast, intuitive visibility into particular issues you want to keep an eye on, like which files and folders have been shared externally, the number of dormant accounts, and the number and type of external app installations. That helps IT stay in the know about employees’ Google Drive usage habits so they can spot vulnerabilities sooner rather than later.
  
  

Take Drive Organization Further with gPanel

While Google Workspace provides a lot of useful features for Drive organization, many businesses find that having a more powerful Workspace administration tool can further simplify using Drive effectively. gPanel by Promevo provides a suite of additional features that makes Drive management even more efficient and secure. With gPanel, you can:

• Automate many aspects of Drive management with the gPanel Rules Engine
• Use a powerful search tool to find and view Drive content for all your employees and departments in one view
• Automatically add new employees and remove former ones from the relevant shared folders, simplifying onboarding and offboarding procedures
• Automatically transfer file or folder ownership when employees change roles or leave, to avoid orphaned files
• Modify shared permissions in bulk, rather than file by file
• Detect risky or unauthorized file shares right away, and override the settings to nip security vulnerabilities in the bud

In short, gPanel gives you more granular control over Google Drive organization and security settings, and helps you help employees to use the software more effectively.

Using Google Workspace in combination with gPanel has the potential to open up new efficiencies in your organization and help you scale more smoothly, all while keeping your organization secure. But getting the most out of Workspace depends on using both tools well. 

Schedule your own gPanel demo today to get started.