Businesses of all sizes use G Suite to breakdown information barriers and increase employee collaboration. It’s been especially helpful for start-ups and for those who run their own businesses, where juggling multiple jobs—from operations to administration to accounting—is second nature.

For many of these businesses, G Suite helps them collaborate securely and free up time so that they can focus on what really matters: their customers. Below are how three businesses use G Suite to both scale and mobilize while keeping their customers top of mind.

MobileOne Keeps its Employees Mobile

Workers spend up to 8 hours per week searching for, or consolidating, information. When you sift through emails to find files or dig through folders to attach documents, that time adds up.

MobileOne experienced this firsthand.

The company, which operates more than 125 T-Mobile premium retail stores in the US, found that its employees were sinking unnecessary time in email going back-and-forth searching for files.

Its previous productivity tools made it difficult to collaborate, especially for remote employees, and tough to share the latest information, like growth and performance metrics, at an accelerated pace. With this in mind, MobileOne moved to G Suite.

Revel Stark, MobileOne’s Director of Recruiting and Marketing, was heading to the beach with his family one Sunday when his colleague sent an urgent request for a document from him. It took just seconds to access the requested document in the Google Drive mobile app and share it, rather than having to search through files on a laptop, or wait until Monday when he was back in the office.

In addition, real-time editing in Docs and Sheets allows MobileOne employees to streamline how they share and edit documents since it eliminates version control. The company now creates central repositories of information in Docs and Sheets, ensuring everyone is working with the most up-to-date information, saved securely in the cloud.

JBGoodwin Realtors Streamlines Business Processes to Create New Home Owners

As a real-estate company with multiple offices in Texas and clients across the country, JBGoodwin Realtors needed a secure productivity solution that powered real-time employee collaboration.

But it also looked to a solution to help reduce costly maintenance, archive information securely in the cloud, and open up opportunities to streamline business processes. The company turned to G Suite to help.

By moving to G Suite, JBGoodwin Realtors adopted a cloud-first strategy that improved its data security by catching phishing attempts before they reached employees, and as a result, helped reduce time spent on platform maintenance by 30 percent.

Because Gmail allows users to easily archive emails in the cloud, the company no longer needs to invest in hard drive space to save messages. Its employees can easily access emails securely on any device both online or offline. Plus, the company can rest assured that their information stays secure with the help of built-in phishing protections.

Finally, via resources in the G Suite Marketplace, JBGoodwin Realtors automated its manual processes by connecting G Suite data with its CRM and marketing tools, so that its realtors can focus on making valuable connections with potential clients instead of inputting data in multiple systems.

TrueCar Drove a Smooth Transition to G Suite 

More than 1.5 billion people use Gmail everyday. Since employees are often already comfortable with using Gmail in their personal lives, transitioning to using it at work is a smooth process.

This was crucial for TrueCar, an automotive resale marketplace that connects sellers with potential buyers (and arms them with pricing information). Minimal onboarding support and training was needed when implementing G Suite.

The team took advantage of G Suite’s User Interface customizations, which can be tailored to a user’s preference in Settings. For example, at TrueCar, admins customized their Calendar interface to be a side-by-side calendar view so they could easily see multiple schedules on a single screen.

With G Suite, there are many ways to customize your apps to help you stay productive.

Every day, we stop more than 100 million harmful emails from reaching Gmail users. Last year, during the peak of the pandemic crisis we saw 18 million daily malware and phishing emails related to COVID-19. This is in addition to more than 240 million COVID-related daily spam messages. Our ML models evolve to understand and filter new threats, and we continue to block more than 99.9% of spam, phishing, and malware from reaching our users.

We wanted to explore what factors influence being targeted by email phishing and malware and whether higher-risk users are adopting the strongest protections we have to offer. To do this, we teamed up with researchers at Stanford University to study over a billion phishing and malware emails and their anonymized targets. We recently presented our study at the Internet Measurement Conference (IMC), and it’s now available here.

We found that multiple factors correlate with higher risk: where you live, what devices you use, and whether your information appeared in previous third-party data breaches. 

Phishing and malware evolves faster than you think

We aggregated and analyzed all of the phishing and malware campaigns that Gmail automatically blocked over a five-month period to identify patterns. 

• We found that users in the United States were the most popular targets (42% of attacks), followed by the United Kingdom (10% of attacks), and Japan (5% of attacks). 
• Most attackers don’t localize their efforts, using the same English email template for users in multiple countries. 
• There is, however, some evidence of regional attackers: 78% of the attacks targeting users in Japan occurred in Japanese, while 66% of attacks targeting Brazilian users occurred in Portuguese.

We also noticed some patterns among attackers and botnets that distribute phishing and malware emails:

• They rely on fast-churning campaigns. A similar email based on a template is sent to 100–1,000 targets on average. 
• The campaigns are brief and bursty, lasting just one to three days on average.
• In a single week, these small-scale campaigns accounted for over 100 million phishing and malware emails in aggregate, targeting Gmail users around the globe.

While the users that attackers target change from week to week, in aggregate these patterns remain largely stable over time.

Factors that correlate with heightened risk

Beyond how attackers operate phishing and malware campaigns, we also analyzed what factors put a user at higher risk of attack. In order to avoid singling out any individual user or their personal data, we used an anonymization technique called “k-anonymity” to ensure any risk trends that we identified applied to a broad group of similar users. We modeled the likelihood of receiving any phishing or malware emails in a given week as a function of geographic location, demographics, security posture, device access, and prior security incidents (such as having personal data revealed by a third-party data breach).

Here is what our model found:

• Having your email or other personal details exposed in a third-party data breach increased the odds of being targeted by phishing or malware by 5X. 
• Where you live also affects risk. In Australia, users faced 2X the odds of attack compared to the United States, despite the United States being the most popular target by volume (not per capita). 
• With respect to demographics, the odds of experiencing an attack was 1.64X higher for 55- to 64-year-olds, compared to 18- to 24-year-olds.
• Mobile-only users experienced lower odds of attack: 0.80X compared to multi-device users. This may stem from socioeconomic factors related to device ownership and attackers targeting wealthier groups.

These correlations help us understand that risk is not evenly spread across geographic and demographic boundaries. 

How to stay safer

Gmail’s phishing and malware protections are automatically turned on by default. Here’s our top recommendations for what you can do today to stay safer.

For individual users:

• Complete a Security Checkup for personalized and actionable security advice.
• If appropriate, consider enrolling in Google’s Advanced Protection program, which provides Google’s strongest security to users at increased risk of targeted online attacks. 
• Enable Enhanced Safe Browsing Protection in Google Chrome to substantially increase your defenses against dangerous websites and downloads on the web.
• Browse these additional tips to manage your online security and choose the right level of protection for yourself.

For Workspace admins:

• New research reveals who’s targeted by email attacks. Take a look at our advanced phishing and malware protection. These are turned on by default across all Google Workspace licenses, and you can further customize them according to the unique needs of your organization.

Education is about more than just imparting information. For the Geneva Business School (GBS), education is about teaching the necessary skills to adapt, survive, and thrive in the world after pupils have graduated. With a diverse, international student body spread out over five campuses, the school prides itself on fostering leadership, communication, and productivity skills as well as academic achievement. In 2016, GBS began searching for ways to help its students work together and improve communication. To do that, it turned to Google Workspace for Education.

“We wanted our content stored in a digital environment where the students could collaborate on projects even when working remotely,” says Carlos Moreno Gonzalez, Barcelona Campus Director at Geneva Business School. “For us the solution was Google Workspace.”

Improving collaboration, increasing accountability

Prior to 2016, GBS’ online course components were designed to be worked on individually. Students could download course materials from extranet sites to work offline on traditional word processing and spreadsheet software. If they were working together, they had to be physically in the same room or would communicate over email. GBS places a strong emphasis on collaborative work, but in such a fragmented setup, it could be hard for professors to work out exactly who had contributed what in each group.

“In just a few clicks you can get a really good picture of the whole class. Whenever we tried this before Google Classroom, we would enter the grades manually and it took forever.”

Sabrina Espasandin, Instructional Designer and Google Trainer, Geneva Business School

For GBS, the solution came from its Barcelona campus, which has a reputation as something of an innovation hub, says Sabrina Espasandin, Instructional Designer and Google Trainer at the school. “It’s smaller than the main campus in Switzerland so there’s more scope for experimenting with new technologies,” she says. GBS wanted to do more than just upgrade its email. The objective was to build an entire online platform enabling students, faculty, and staff to not only communicate with each other, but also to use it as a productivity platform for documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and more.

Connecting students and professors with Google Classroom

After evaluating its options, the Barcelona campus chose to implement Google Workspace for Education in early 2016, largely because of the widespread adoption of Google tools by students in their personal lives. “Most of our students were very familiar with Google tools and how Google works,” says Carlos. “It made the transition much easier for them.” With such a radical change, GBS also made sure to provide adequate training for everybody to help them overcome any issues that might arise during the transition. “There was a little pushback from people who had been using the same tools for a long time,” says Sabrina. “But once they saw for themselves the benefits of the new system, we turned sceptics into believers.”

The core of the new system was Google Classroom, a single, online destination where teachers and students could quickly and easily interact with each other no matter where they were. Gmail replaced the traditional email system, easing the load on the campus servers. Live editing in Docs, Sheets, and Slides meant that students could work on projects and presentations at the same time without having to email multiple versions, which could get buried in long threads.

“It’s changed the whole way we work. Students would post questions online, and other students would answer them before the teacher got there. It means the knowledge comes from the class, not just from the professor.” –

Carlos Moreno Gonzalez, Barcelona Campus Director, Geneva Business School

The faculty used Sites as an opportunity to update their course materials from static slideshows that had to be downloaded for offline viewing, into animated, interactive pages online. Meanwhile, Forms proved itself useful as a way for professors to setup quizzes online and, in conjunction with Google Classroom, to help automate the marking process and quickly analyze results.

A new platform, a new way of working

The online hub that GBS built in Barcelona with Google Classroom and Google Workspace was very quickly seen as a success. So much so, that within six months, the school rolled out Google Workspace to all of its other campuses. As of Q3 2018, GBS has activated more than 2,300 user accounts. The students benefit from instant communication, frictionless collaboration, and the ability to work on projects outside the classroom. It also means they are in a better position to answer each other’s questions without having to wait for a response from their teacher.

Meanwhile, GBS’ teachers no longer have to deal with an extranet that required them to upload all their own content in an overly complicated way or spend hours bulk-creating new email addresses at the start of each year. “The time saved in administrative tasks has been massive,” says Sabrina. “User creation is a breeze compared to the past.” In addition, the faculty found a new efficiency with rote tasks, such as grading analysis, which allowed them to spend more time focusing on students and assessing their specific needs.

“In just a few clicks you can get a really good picture of the whole class,” says Sabrina. “Whenever we tried this before Google Classroom, we would enter the grades manually and it took forever.”

“We’ve built a very personalized online platform designed to engage students and reduce dropout rates. With Google, we hope to bring the collaborative spirit we have in our normal classes to our online classrooms.” –

Carlos Moreno Gonzalez, Barcelona Campus Director, Geneva Business School

Meanwhile, Professors have found that, despite fears of an always-online culture, the collaborative nature of the new platform empowers students to help each other instead of just relying on help from the faculty.

“It’s changed the whole way we work,” says Carlos. “Students would post questions online, and other students would answer them before the teacher got there. It means the knowledge comes from the class, not just from the professor.”

With all of GBS migrated to Google Workspace, the search is on for the next leap forward. The school is currently working hard to provide some of its courses entirely online, for students who wish to work remotely but still benefit from GBS’ superior teaching and strong reputation. The content for the new modules will be hosted on Sites, while Google Classroom will serve as a central hub for teacher-student communication. GBS is working to personalize the modules for teachers and students alike. For example, every teacher will have access to a classroom roster that provides quick links to students’ digital portfolios, also hosted on a Google Site.

Building on the knowledge it has acquired in the last two years with various Google tools, the school is trying to make online learning more effective, as well as develop more in-depth measurements of student growth and progression. As it becomes more comfortable with Google Workspace and Google Classroom, GBS can look forward to exploring its new metrics with tools such as Google Data Studio.

“We’ve built a very personalized online platform designed to engage students and reduce dropout rates,” says Carlos. “With Google, we hope to bring the collaborative spirit we have in our normal classes to our online classrooms.”