Google Launches Alert Center for G Suite
10.9.2018 securityweek Security

Google is making it easier for G Suite administrators to access notifications, alerts, and actions by bringing them all together in a single place with the launch of a new alert center.

Currently available in Beta, the alert center provides admins with a comprehensive view on essential notifications, and allows them to easily take actions to better serve and protect their organizations, Google says. The new feature was designed deliver insights to help admins better assess an organization’s exposure to security issues at the domain and user levels.

“In addition, G Suite Enterprise edition domains can use the G Suite security center for integrated remediation of issues surfaced by alerts,” the Internet company explains.

The alert center will bring together notifications on security threats and monitoring, as well as critical system alerts.

As part of the Beta launch, the center includes three types of alerts: Google Operations (details on G Suite security and privacy issues that Google is investigating), Gmail phishing and spam (spikes in user-reported phishing), and mobile device management (information on devices that are exhibiting suspicious behavior or have been compromised).

The Beta program has been launched for all G Suite customers.

Additionally, Google is making it easier for users to set phones and tablets as company-owned devices. Starting on September 19, all users who add their G Suite account to a new Android device before adding their personal account will be asked to set up the device as their own or as company-owned.

“If you have advanced mobile device management but don’t register your company-owned devices in the Admin console, your users must choose to set up their devices as company-owned,” Google explained.

At the moment, the choice is only displayed to users if their organizations have Device Owner mode enabled. Starting September 19, that option will disappear from the Admin console and a new screen will be displayed to them on new (and recently factory-reset) devices running Android 6.0 or higher.

Also on September 19, users with company-owned Android devices and work profiles will be allowed to install any app from the managed Google Play store by default. Organizations, however, can restrict app availability to whitelisted apps.