At the Google Cloud Next conference in Las Vegas, Google on Tuesday expanded its Chrome Enterprise product suite with the release of Chrome Enterprise Premium.
Google has long offered a business-focused version of its Chrome browser. With Chrome Enterprise, IT departments have the ability to manage employees’ browser settings, the extensions they install and the web apps they use, for example. Most importantly, though, they also get a number of new security controls around data loss prevention, malware protection, phishing prevention, and Zero Trust access to SaaS applications.
Chrome Enterprise Premium, which will cost $6/user/month, mostly extends the security capabilities of the existing service, based on the knowledge that browsers are now the endpoints where most of the high-value work is done within a company.
“Authentication, access, communication and collaboration, management, and even coding are all browser-based activities in the modern enterprise,” Parisa Tabriz, Google’s vice president of Chrome, wrote in Tuesday’s announcement. “Endpoint security is becoming increasingly difficult due to remote work, reliance on an extended workforce, and the proliferation of new devices that are not part of an organization’s managed fleet. As these trends continue to accelerate and converge, it’s clear that the browser is a natural enforcement point for endpoint security in the modern enterprise.”
These new capabilities include additional enterprise controls to enforce policies and manage software updates and extensions, as well as new security reporting and forensic capabilities that can be integrated with third-party security tools. Chrome Enterprise Premium takes Zero Trust a step further with context-aware access controls that can also mitigate the risk of data leakage. This includes approved applications and those not approved by the IT department.
“With Chrome Enterprise Premium, we trust Google’s security expertise, including Project Zero’s cutting-edge security research and rapid security patches. We set data loss prevention restrictions and warnings about sharing sensitive information in applications such as AI platforms and saw a remarkable 50% reduction in content transfers,” said Nick Reva, head of enterprise security engineering at Snap.
The new service is now generally available.
