G Suite Major Security Risks and How to Avoid Them!
G Suite, undoubtedly, is one of the best collaboration application available for all business users. But when it comes at Data Theft, then everyone is vulnerable, and the risk increases manifold times for cloud users, where each and everything is linked. A single click on wrong link can destroy the entire data that any company relies upon. Every cloud user faces security risks on daily basis and look for solutions to prevent them.
The following blog will guide you to know the major Security Risks of G Suite and different ways to avoid them.
Most Common G Suite Security Threats
- Phishing
- Ransomware
- Insider Threats
- Nasty Third Party Apps and Google Add-ons
Phishing is a big Threat to G Suite Accounts
Phishing is a technique used for stealing personal data or information like Credit Card /Net Banking details. It is usually done via emails, text message or even a phone call and is pretended to be sent through a trusted source, for example, the bank in which you are having your personal/business account, Netflix, your boss etc. The mail received in Inbox prompts you for some action, like :
- Clicking on malicious link
- Downloading an attachment file contacting ransomware
- Sending money
- Winning a lottery
- Sharing Credit Card / Net banking Details for database update and verification etc.
What you should do to avoid Phishing?
- Be cautious to the emails you receive. Following are some crucial signs, pointing towards security threat for your G Suite account and disclosing that some phishing scam is waiting to happen :
- Some unusual email address in the From and To and Cc Fields is a pure sign of Phishing attack
- You receive surprising attachments (they usually come as zip files). It is advised NOT to open them.
- Strange links with misspelled letters. To validate the authenticity of links you must scroll over them and check the destination URL address that may contain something different, completely irrelevant to the email. This definitely is a Phishing scam.
- Requests for sharing your card details for making payment towards some purchases, paying bills or fees towards transferring of lottery amount. Request also appear to change net banking details by entering information on suspicious webpages.
- Utilize enhanced pre-delivery message scanning, which is a native service for G Suite administrators to help them identify phishing emails. This service may not be 100% reliable, but its shows some sort of warning and moves the suspicious message to spam folder.
Ransomware is Widespread
Ransomware is a malware variant that stops users from accessing their data or files until they pay a huge “ransom” to the hacker. A ransomware encodes all the files of the infected system, and unscrambles the data into unreadable format. You need a digital key for decrypting the data which you can get only after paying a huge ransom amount. The threat becomes bigger when ransomware attacks your G Suite cloud data. A ransomware attack on admin account will encrypt all its user account data as well.
Ransomware has become an epidemic ; many users are suffering from it, on an average of 14 seconds per user. As per reports, tens of thousands of dollars are paid by corporates to get access to their crucial data.
How Ransomware Attacks Your System?
To safeguard your data from ransomware attacks, you must be aware of how to catch them. Your G Suite files may be affected in following ways.
- Clicking an unsolicited link received from your G Suite account. These links generally come with phishing mail. Make sure that you don’t end up click those unauthorised links that you receive in your Inbox that will infect your system and encrypt your files into some unreadable format.
- Through Backup and Sync service. Assuming that you have this sync service installed on your machine. Suppose you have clicked a wrong link on your system, but because your system is synced with your Google Drive, all those files will get encrypted as well.
- By installing third-party extensions. To give added functionality to our account, we may end up installing third-party apps, which may not be trustworthy at all. Some of those extensions may be malicious and giving them permission to manage data may end up our data being encrypted by ransomware.
How to Protect Yourself from Ransomware?
As discussed above, there is no fool proof method that will safeguard you from ransomware. So its better to be prepared for the same. The best way to protect your G Suite account from ransomware is to keep its backup in some external storage device or store it directly to some other storage account. Doing this will help you keep a copy of your crucial data that you can restore in your G Suite account, in case something unfortunate happens.
Data Theft by Insiders
Data breach is a term not only associated with cyber attackers, but with inside attackers too. It’s a harsh reality that your data is in constant threat from your employees (including ex-employees) and needs to be protected from them too. And if are working in a G Suite environment, where you have shared your upcoming projects, marketing strategies, targeted customers etc. with your team and other employees ; then this threat can be more bigger and serious.
Tips to Avoid Insider Threats
Always follow the essential security measures when an employee leaves your company/organization. Some of them comprise of :
- Disabling their access to G Suite apps/services
- Keeping a backup of their complete data
- Accumulating all devices that were given to them
- Reviewing of all the third party apps and add-ons that they installed on their machines
Harmful External Apps and Google Add-ons
Third-party apps can prove to be beneficial as they are developed by and downloaded from trusted sources. But, if they are downloaded from some unauthorized sources, then the same apps can become a nuisance and pose as a threat to your G Suite data.
Most fake apps are developed with the sole aim of stealing your crucial data. They are designed to look very appealing to users who downloads them without thinking twice. For functioning, they prompt users to grant them permissions, which may include editing or deleting any data, sending messages on your behalf etc. And granting these types of permissions to more apps will increase the threat to your important data.
And this threat may increase manifold times, when you work with G Suite account. It becomes almost impossible to trace which malicious apps have been granted permissions and from which devices. It may happen that an employee has inadvertently downloaded and granted permissions the malicious app, which infected the entire system and shared G Suite data with ransomware.
How to Evade Malicious Apps?
You may opt for a professional G Suite cyber security service, which will display the list of apps and add-ons to which you have granted access and the credibility levels of each app. Basically, it will show complete audit of the installed third party apps.
And the best method to avoid these malicious apps, before its tool late, is to keep timely backup of your G Suite account data in any external drive or directly into another cloud apps.
Now its time to Wrap Up
In this post we have discussed about most common security threats to G Suite account and its data. Data Theft is on rise these days and its our responsibility to secure our data from any kind of threat and theft. To help you secure your G Suite account data, you can utilize G Suite Email Backup Tool that provides instant support to backup G Suite data to external hard drive by saving it as PST, PDF, EML, MSG, MBOX, HTML. And if you are looking for a way to move your G Suite account data to another cloud account, then you can also achieve the same with this tool. It supports to move G Suite data to Office 365, Exchange/Hosted Exchange, Amazon Workmail, IMAP Server, Outlook.com and many more cloud accounts.
