Precise Software

Adding a Critical Layer of Data Protection for Google Docs

Precise chooses CloudLock for Google Apps to provide a security layer over Google Docs to effectively manage documents in the cloud.

Precise offers performance and availability management for business-critical applications with a fresh and innovative approach to application and transction performance management. The company has over 1,500 customers across the globe who make up 85% of the Fortune 100.

Precise is a global company that offers application performance management solutions that deliver visibility and control to help IT master complex application environments, and solve the right problem using the right resources at the right time.

More than 15 years of sustained investment and development has positioned Precise’s solution as a leader among application performance management alternatives. Precise’s Application Performance Management solution helps meet service-level requirements for even the most demanding organizations.

Business Problem

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Precise migrated to Google Apps over a year ago, and enjoyed the financial savings of the move as well as the collaboration benefits that came with it. With Google recently adding the ability to purchase additional storage (up to 16 TB), the adoption of Google Docs at Precise reached an all time high.

With the help of we-doit! – the largest Google Apps reseller in Israel, Precise is now using CloudLock to manage Google Docs.

“We now make CloudLock part of every Google Apps implementation. We feel that every customer that uses Google Docs needs the visibility and control for compliance, auditing and general IT operations.” said Doron Birman, Technical Director and Co-founder at we-doit!.

Immediately after enabling CloudLock on the Precise Google Apps domain, the IT team gained visibility into all documents and users in the domain, and was able to locate and secure all sensitive documents.

“With the rapid adoption of Google Docs, we realized that as an IT organization we needed similar controls to what we used to have with on premise file servers. We need the visibility into which documents are exposed and who is viewing them to make sure that our sensitive documents are secure,” said Dan Gorelick, IT Manager at Precise.

The CloudLock Solution

Enabling CloudLock allowed the IT team at Precise to control and manage the documents stored in Google Docs to fully realize the benefits of collaboration in the cloud.

With CloudLock for Google Apps, the IT team is able to:

• Monitor and receive exposure alerts, getting email alerts with newly exposed documents and changes in permissions
• Transfer ownership of documents from one user to another (in bulk or for a single file)
• Gain visibility into all the documents in the domain and see their sharing settings and a detailed ACL view
• Fully control document permissions (add or remove collaborators, change ownership and change collaborator access rights)
• Get a privileged document view for audit and compliance (recorded in an immutable audit trail)
• Provide quick and easy visibility to end-users. showing their documents’ public, external and internal exposures

A Critical Tool for Organizations Serious About Security, Data Privacy, and Admin Workflow Efficiency

“As the IT Manager at Precise, I manage hundreds of users in multiple remote sites. Google Docs is giving us the flexibility to collaborate from anywhere, but with content accessibility administered by end users comes an increased risk of data exposure. CloudLock adds a layer of data protection over our Google Docs that not only puts the control we have on par with our on-premise file servers, but in some areas, we have better control of our data in Google Docs than on our on-premise file servers,” said Gorelick.

With CloudLock, domain administrators are able to centrally manage Google Docs permissions for all documents in the domain (even if they not a collaborator on all the documents).

With the majority of newly created documents stored in the cloud, CloudLock provides the necessary administrative and security layer to manage documents in the cloud file server. The IT team at Precise uses CloudLock to find all exposed documents and fix sharing settings. Ongoing monitoring and alerting features make sure that documents do not become mistakenly compromised.

“As a security-conscious organization, ongoing monitoring is a key for us. Twice a week I get a report and review all the new exposed documents and sharing permissions,“ said Shai Almog, Information Security Manager at Precise.

Build vs. Buy: An Easy Decision

“When considering the options I had, choosing CloudLock was an easy decision to make. In-house development was not an option, as the cost and the detour from our core business was a heavy and un-necessary price to pay,” said Sharon Cohen, IT Director at Precise.

When considering an alternative to CloudLock companies have the following options:

• Build an in-house, custom solution using Google APIs. This option requires allocating development resources to scope, architect, implement and develop
• Outsource development to a 3rd party
• Do nothing and assume the risks and increased costs of security breaches, noncompliance and ongoing manual, labor-intensive, and error prone processes

CloudLock is a Google Apps Marketplace application running on Google App Engine. This ensures that all meta-data collected and all application processing remain within the same SAS70-II certified environment that supports Google Email, Calendar, Docs and other applications.

As a Google Apps Marketplace application, CloudLock is easy to install, and uses OpenID for single sign-on and SSL for all communications.