Panama City, Florida selects CloudLock for Google Apps to enable safe and secure rollout of Google Docs throughout city agencies

Panama City, FL. is located on the panhandle of northwest Florida on beautiful St. Andrews Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. Panama City is known as a popular tourist location year round offering a comfortable climate and friendly atmosphere.

Panama City is also one of the first cities in the US to adopt Google Apps for Government as part of its on-going philosophy of making operations transparent to their citizens.

Business Problem

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Panama City has been using Google Apps for Government since 2008, starting with an initial rollout of email and the use of Google Sites. The next initiative aimed at fully leveraging the collaboration suites with the adoption of Google Docs.

Prior to implementing CloudLock for Google Apps, Panama City’s use of Google Docs was limited to point projects like pages served on their website via Google Sites. The city’s IT team needed a solution that would give them the control they needed to be able to both promote widespread adoption of Google Docs, and allowed them to meet state regulations and IT governance best practices.

The CloudLock Solution

Panama City’s Network Administrator was looking for a way to gain visibility into who was using Google Docs, how users were collaborating both inside and outside the domain, and needed to have the ability to control and enforce data sharing policies where needed. Selecting CloudLock gave Panama City consistent visibility and control of their data stored in Google Docs.

“As a government agency, we strive to be as efficient as we can and provide the best service to our communities and residents. Taking the adoption of Google Docs to the next level is an essential cornerstone in achieving this goal,” said Richard Ferrick, Panama City’s Network Administrator.

“CloudLock is a must-have solution for every government agency promoting the wide use of Google Docs in multiple city agencies. We are now storing sensitive data in the cloud, and that data needs to be protected to meet state regulations, e-discovery needs and more. Cloud lock gives us that protection,” said Ferrick.

Visibility Into Google Docs Adoption

After making the switch to Google Apps, the first challenge facing a Google Apps admin is understanding the adoption of Google Docs by both end-users and organizational units, and visibility into how documents are being collaborated on both inside and outside the domain.

CloudLock for Google Apps is a Google Marketplace application built on the Google Apps Engine that provides key IT data management insights like:

• Data Inventory – how many documents exist and which types?
• Which documents are shared with the ‘public’ or Internet?
• Which documents are shared outside the organization?
• Which documents are shared with ‘Everyone’ within the domain?
• Who has access to what and what is accessible to whom?

“For the first time since the rollout of Google Docs, I was able to have the visibility I needed into the adoption and usage patterns,” said Ferrick. “Using CloudLock CloudLock for Google Apps was like lighting a flashlight in a dark room.”

Control Sensitive Data Stored In Google Docs

With the new visibility into their Google Docs usage and adoption, Panama City was ready to gain control of their data. Using CloudLock for Google Apps they were able to:

• Schedule reports to run automatically
• Notify data owners of policy violations or exposed documents containing potentially sensitive data
• Change or revoke excessive rights as a domain admin
• Audit permissions changes performed by all domain admins with an audit trail

“Being able to change permissions as a domain admin without going through the end-users proved to be a real time saver,” said Ferrick. “Before we had CloudLock, the only real alternative was to assume a user’s identity and go through their documents one by one – not exactly how I want to be spending my time.”

End-User Enablement – Delegate Visibility And Control To Data Owners

The right way to manage data is to empower data owners to do it themselves. With CloudLock for Google Apps, the domain admin can designate department leaders to manage their respective organizational unit’s data policies and usage by giving them access to the application.

“As the data custodian, I don’t have the business context to help determine which documents should be shared with whom and how,” said Ferrick. “Now we can delegate that task to the data owners without making them domain admins, thus reducing our workload.”

Protecting Data In the Cloud

For security conscious IT leaders leveraging Google Apps, CloudLock for Google Apps is the only cloud data protection solution that enables control of data while gaining the collaboration and cost savings benefits of Google Apps.

CloudLock for Google Apps is the only enterprise-class data protection application for Google Apps.