Data Governance – In the cloud

Teach For Australia selects CloudLock to achieve data governance for Google Docs

Teach For Australia is an independent not-for-profit, charitable organization supported by both public and private sector partners, which engages Australia’s best graduates in addressing one of the country’s most pressing social issues – educational disadvantage. Its mission is to confront educational disadvantage by transforming outstanding graduates into exceptional teachers and inspirational leaders. Its vision is of an Australia where all children have excellent education opportunities.

Business Problem

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As a non-for-profit organization, Teach For Australia’s IT team is constantly looking for ways to drive efficiency up, and the cost of operations down, while maintaining the highest possible service level. With the adoption of Google Apps and Google Docs, the organization needed a way to achieve data governance in Google Docs, giving them the same control for data stored in the cloud as the data stored on their local file servers.

The CloudLock Solution

The IT team was looking for a way to secure and audit Google Docs while realizing the efficiencies and cost savings of the cloud. Selecting CloudLock for Google Apps gives Teach For Australia the visibility and control of their corporate data stored in the cloud.

“CloudLock for Google Apps allows us to audit Google Docs,” said Paul Hollingbery, Director of IT Operations. “When we reviewed the product we realized we would have better visibility & control into our cloud data permissions and usage than we ever had with our file servers.”

Auditing Google Docs Permissions with CloudLock for Google Apps

As end-users use Google Docs to reap the benefits of online collaboration, an ‘old’ problem manifests itself: Wherever end-users control access rights and security, given enough time, users and documents, permission mistakes will be made, and sensitive documents will get overly permissive. CloudLock for Google Apps is a Google Marketplace application built on Google Apps Engine that answers key IT controls questions:

• Which documents are shared with the public or Internet?
• Which documents are shared outside the company?
• Which documents are shared with ‘Everyone’ within the company?
• Who has access to what and what is accessible to whom?

“Gaining visibility through auditing Google Docs is just half of the picture for us,” said Hollingbery. “Being able to revoke permissions as a domain admin without going through the end-users proved to be a real time saver for us.”

Benefits of a SaaS Solution

“In 2010, the question is not whether an organization should leverage cloud-based solutions,” said Hollingbery. “Instead, we need to have a good reason to NOT take advantage of SaaS, and those reasons are getting harder to come by.”