Google’s email client, Googlemail or usually referred to as Gmail, has more than a billion users across the world. Gmail was one of the first email services that was free to users in cash terms, as Google used keywords in email messages to build an advertising profile of customers. However, as is Google’s way over the years Gmail has been improved and refined. Today the mail service benefits from a number of innovative improvements such as two-step verification, security keys, SSL encryption and the work to remove spam. In the source blog, Google’s Gerhard Eschelbeck explains how the Gmail spam system is, “one of the earliest and finest examples of applying massive computing power and machine learning to solve a big security challenge.” Following Gmail’s spam filter process, today spam messages are down to just 0.1% of emails for the average Gmail user.
Gmail is one of a number of tools, applications and services available for Google’s corporate services, such as Google Apps; the technology is integrated into Google’s products and services, which means that an Android powered smartphone or tablet, or a Chromebook, work beautifully with the service. Google Apps are also available for the Apple iOS platform too and here too, they work very well. Furthermore, Google have a policy of improving their offerings and services and today we bring you news of some changes taking place in the Google Apps email security system.
Gerhard is speaking at the RSA Conference, San Francisco, this week in part to showcase a new feature being implemented for the Gmail at Work customers: optical character recognition is being incorporated into Google’s Data Loss Prevention system, also known as DLP. Google rolled out the data loss prevention technology for Google Apps Unlimited customers at the end of 2015. It’s the system designed to prevent employees from sending sensitive data out of the organisation. The new technology is going to be applied to look at the contents of file attachments and read text in images to make sure that service users are not sending illicit, sensitive documents to an unauthorised source – and it uses Google’s cloud computing platform for the raw processing power behind the system. The improvements will work hand in hand with some improvements in policy control that allow a more granular approach and offer greater coverage to identify personally identifiable and health record information.