Maintaining security at an enterprise company is an endlessly complex process. The more employees, external users, data, and documents you have to manage, the more work it is to keep your sensitive data secure and your organization in compliance.
With so many overwhelming factors to stay on top of, many teams end up practicing reactive security in how they manage Google Workspace. They may provide trainings and offer employees guidance on best practices, but they mostly take action after they learn a security incident has happened.
By then, you may already be facing the consequences of a security breach. What you really want is to find a practical way to practice proactive security.
That's where gPanel's Rules Engine can make a big difference. Your staff doesn't have the time to micromanage employees — and you wouldn't want that anyway.
Employees need the space to do their jobs. What works better is taking advantage of Google Workspace automation options to help your team identify potential security threats in real time and act on them — without substantially increasing their workload.
The gPanel Rules Engine lets admins program "if this, then that" style automations. Setting up a specific automation in gPanel is quick and intuitive. You simply select the action that will trigger an automation, then define what action or event should happen in response to that trigger.
The tool lets you choose from a dropdown list of common Google Workspace actions you can define as a trigger, along with a list of the actions you can tell the Rules Engine to perform in response. To give you an idea, some of the actions available include:
With these options, the gPanel Rules Engine gives administrators the ability to automate a wide range of tasks. In the realm of security, it gives you the means to automatically stop risky activities right away — faster than a human employee would be able to step in personally.
In short, you can build stronger security processes that work without bogging your IT staff down.
A simple automation can already help your team offload tedious work, but the Rules Engine lets you go even further. You can create automations that trigger multiple actions.
For example, if you wanted to set up an automation for each time a new employee joins your legal team, you could use the Rules Engine:
This saves your admins the trouble of performing each step manually, and makes it easy to apply the appropriate level of security restrictions to users based on their position in the company.
That's just the start. There are a lot of different ways you can use the gPanel Rules Engine to improve your Google Workspace security. Here are a few examples.
When we think of security risk, it's easy to picture a rogue hacker working from a foreign country. We'd prefer to imagine risk as coming mostly from outside the organization.
In fact, when it comes to data security, employees are actually one of the biggest vulnerabilities that organizations face. And that risk increases with former employees, who have no reason to treat their access to old accounts and data with care after leaving the organization — especially if they left on bad terms.
According to research from Wing Security, at 85% of organizations, external users have access to the company's data. And one out of five organizations have former users that weren't fully offboarded.
At enterprise companies, a certain amount of turnover is inevitable and admins often can't keep up with offboarding every employee that leaves. gPanel's Rules Engine can help.
Instead of manually removing every employee from Workspace, set up an automation to do the work for you.
With this Google Workspace automation, your team can make sure employees lose access to sensitive company data and documents within moments, rather than over weeks and months. By eliminating the "gap time" between an employee leaving and their account being deactivated, you prevent data exfiltration and remove opportunities for retaliation from disgruntled former workers.
Bonus: If you want to take this automation further, you can pair Rules Engine with the gPanel API or a workflow automation tool like Zapier to have the same trigger remove the former employee from other platforms, like Paycor or Microsoft Office.
While external hackers are a constant concern, internal actions — whether intentional or accidental — can pose an even greater risk to your data security. A sudden spike in file downloads or the mass sharing of internal documents can be a red flag for data exfiltration.
You can use the gPanel Rules Engine to create an automatic response to these "high-risk" behaviors. Instead of waiting for an admin to manually review a log, you can program an immediate security hurdle.
By forcing a session termination and password reset, you effectively "pause" the user's activity. If the activity was legitimate, the user can simply reset their credentials and get back to work. However, if the account was compromised or an employee was attempting to take data before leaving the company, you've successfully cut off their access and protected your organization’s sensitive information in real-time.
Employees are a huge risk vector for data security. The more sensitive data employees have access to, the more simple mistakes have the potential to cause big consequences for your company.
Mimecast research shows a 28% increase in the average number of insider-driven data exposure, loss, leak, and theft events since 2021. And on average, IT teams spend three hours a day investigating insider-driven data events.
That's not the best use of your time. One of the easiest ways to minimize risk is to practice the Principle of Least Privilege (PoLP). In other words, take measures to ensure each employee only has access to the data and documents they need to do their job. You can use gPanel's Rules Engine to make PoLP easier.
As long as you create clear templates for each Group in advance that set them up with the resources they need to do a job within that department, they should be set. IT can simplify the onboarding process for each new employee, or for when employees move into a new role, while minimizing data risk at the same time.
While adhering to data strategies like PoLP can make a big difference in your risk level, some internal users will inevitably need access to your most sensitive data. Employees who need high-level access, like Super Admins in Google Workspace, require a higher level of caution.
The IT team can use automation to better monitor these kinds of high-privilege accounts, and catch warning signs earlier when a change occurs that could signal an issue.
If something is amiss, knowing about the change right away gives your team the chance to address the problem before a bad actor can do anything with the Super Admin’s account. In addition to giving the security team the opportunity to check in with the Super Admin about the update, it also creates a real-time audit trail.
gPanel's Rules Engine isn't just helpful for online data security issues, it can also play a role in helping you manage physical resources. Google Workspace lets you create resource calendars for users to book physical resources like conference rooms and lab equipment. The Rules Engine can be used to automate aspects of resource management.
For example, if an employee or a team books a resource too often — monopolizing it so others in the company can't use it when needed — the Rules Engine can automatically deny bookings over a certain amount.
This helps you ensure resources are available to employees when they're needed. And by making the denial process automatic, IT can avoid stepping on the toes of employees who may otherwise be upset at the limitation.
Maintaining security for Google Workspace at a large organization is a big job. An overwhelmed IT team is more likely to miss critical risk issues. The more tasks you can automate, the more time your team has to handle the issues that require their unique skills and knowledge.
The gPanel Rules Engine makes creating new automations easy. Setting up a new rule can take a matter of minutes, making it a practical option to simplify IT workflows without keeping your team from their other responsibilities.
If your organization already has the Enterprise gPanel plan, check out the Rules Engine webinar for a starter guide on using the tool. If you're interested in learning more about the Enterprise plan, we’re happy to provide a demo.