Guardian News and Media Limited (GNM)

Data Loss Prevention for Google Docs

Guardian News and Media Selects CloudLock to Audit and Control Google Docs Sharing and Prevent Potential Data Loss.

The Guardian newspaper was founded in 1821 and has grown from nineteenth century local paper to a national paper associated with a complex organizational structure and international multimedia presence as well as a large web presence.

Business Problem

By implementing Google Apps and Google Docs, the IT team at GNM was able to provide the organization with a suite of collaboration tools that realize the cost savings of storing documents in the cloud.

The nature of the business requires that documents can be shared outside the organization’s domain with 3rd party writers, vendors and others.

“One of the business requirements is to be able to share documents with others outside our domain. However, we also must maintain the controls, visibility and security of the sharing permissions of all our documents,” said Nick Woodcraft, Applications Manager at GNM.

Key Benefits of the CloudLock Solution

“CloudLock gives us control and visibility into how documents are shared, and allows us to manage sharing outside our domain,” said Woodcraft.

After selecting CloudLock to mitigate the risk of sharing outside the domain, and putting CloudLock in production, the security team was able to:

• View all documents in the domain and see their sharing settings (internally and externally)
• Fully control document permissions (add and remove collaborators, change ownership, and change collaborator access rights)
• Monitor and receive exposure alerts, getting email alerts with newly exposed documents and changes in permissions (the same report is also available from within the application)

GNM is also planning to roll out exposure classification for end users, letting the security team delegate control to end-users by providing them with a dashboard-like view in their native Google Docs environment.

Control and Visibility Into Google Document Sharing

CloudLock gives Google Apps domain administrators an effective way to manage documents, folders and users in the domain as well as documents shared from outside the domain.

CloudLock users can change and correct permissions for all documents and folders, including those they are not shared on. They can audit and secure sensitive documents while having an audit trail for all actions performed with CloudLock.

Data Security and Monitoring for Google Apps

CloudLock provides ongoing monitoring of the entire domain with email alerts on newly exposed documents and changes in permissions for existing documents. The same report is also available from within the application with the ability view the specific documents. Users can select a time range and view all the changes in their domain for a specified time.

CloudLock gives domain administrators visibility into all documents in the domain with detailed change reports, history and trends.

Exposure classification and data exposure reports for the entire domain and for each user give the domain administrator a powerful tool to easily monitor and stay on top of all security issues and concerns.

Build Vs. Buy

Like many other large enterprises, GNM’s Development department considered the option of building its own solution.

“We looked around and didn’t find anything suitable except for CloudLock. The time and budget investment needed to develop a home-grown solution just did not make sense for us. Instead we chose CloudLock as a strategic, long-term product to use,” said Woodcraft.