Security Assessment Performed for 600-User Google Workspace Environment

Looking to improve their Google Workspace environment security, MeBe reached out to HiView. Following a discussion of MeBe’s long-term goals, a full Google Workspace security assessment was conducted. Deliverables included a security scorecard evaluating their existing standards and a document detailing recommendations for improvement.

The challenge

As an organization handling protected health information (PHI), MeBe is always looking to improve its security standards. MeBe IT leadership sought an external auditor with Workspace expertise to help them understand and improve their organization’s security posture.

Fortunately, the three Workspace Admins in MeBe’s nearly 600-user environment were well-attuned to employee behavior and identified potential user impacts. This would make rollout of the settings changes easier and more predictable.

The approach

As with all of our Security Assessments, a 3-phased approach was used.

Phase 1 – A technical discovery session was conducted in order to analyze the existing data structure, access control, and processes.

Phase 2 – Three security workshops were held with MeBe’s Admins. In this stage, advanced Workspace Enterprise Plus security visibility features (i.e.  Investigation Tool, Security Sandbox) were demonstrated in a test environment, resulting in MeBe’s decision to upgrade to this edition.

Phase 3 – A detailed security scorecard was presented to the MeBe team, as well as recommendations for setting changes. All user and Admin configurations were evaluated for each Workspace application, including external integrations.

The results

• All settings were analyzed for the ~600 accounts
• An upgrade to Google Workspace Enterprise Plus was executed
• Security recommendations and a scorecard were delivered
• MeBe gained access to ongoing Workspace support from HiView at no additional cost