Google Cloud's BeyondCorp Framework Helps Govts Adopt Zero Trust Approach to Security - Build What's Next
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Google Cloud’s BeyondCorp Framework Helps Govts Adopt Zero Trust Approach to Security

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To improve nation's cybersecurity, the U.S. Office of Management and Budget released a federal strategy to move towards a zero trust architecture. Read this blogpost to learn how BeyondCorp is poised to help govt orgs to adopt zero trust principles!

For more than a decade, Google has applied a Zero Trust approach to most aspects of our operations. Zero Trust’s core tenet–that implicit trust in any single component of a complex, interconnected system can create serious security risks–is fundamental to how we operate and build our security architecture.

Early in our security journey, we realized that despite our best efforts user credentials would periodically fall into the hands of malicious actors. This is why we developed the BeyondCorp framework. We needed additional layers of defense against unauthorized access that would not impede user productivity. We also understood that software that interacts with the larger world should not have a perimeter-based trust model. These realizations led to the layered protection in our BeyondProd framework, which extends the Zero Trust paradigm to our production workloads.

Earlier this year, the United States Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released a Federal Strategy to Move the U.S. Government Towards a Zero Trust Architecture. This marks an important step for the U.S. government’s efforts to modernize under Executive Order 14028 on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity. In parallel, guidance from the United Kingdom’s National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) has also called for the move to a Zero Trust approach to security and outlined in 2021 its report on Zero Trust architecture design principles.

Adopting a Zero Trust approach can help organizations inside and outside the public sector stay ahead of both regulatory requirements and security threats, but it requires thoughtful planning and execution. Our goal is to bring the best practices for Zero Trust together in one place, leveraging the experiences and knowledge of our existing customers, and Google’s own experience with implementing Zero Trust.

How Google Cloud can help government agencies move toward Zero Trust


Agencies can rely on Google Zero Trust capabilities for remote access, secure collaboration, and boundary security. To better serve the Zero Trust needs of our customers, we introduced BeyondCorp Enterprise in January 2021, a solution that provides Zero Trust secure access to resources and applications in the cloud and on-premises. BeyondCorp Enterprise was built based on years of Google’s own innovation as we implemented Zero Trust globally for ourselves. It leverages the Chrome browser and Google’s global network, and it offers integrated real-time threat and data protection.

Here are five ways BeyondCorp Enterprise can be applied to help organizations adopt the Zero Trust cybersecurity principles set forth in the recent White House memorandum (M-22-09) and other global government guidance for Zero Trust.

  1. Enable enterprise applications to be used over the public internet: It’s no secret that VPN usage poses daily burdens and long-term challenges for IT and cybersecurity managers, as well as end-users. BeyondCorp Enterprise provides users with seamless and secure access to web applications (including SaaS apps and apps hosted on any cloud), plus central management controls and threat and data protection capabilities, all built-in to the Chrome browser. Through BeyondCorp Enterprise, end-users can access applications simply and still benefit from enterprise-grade security, without sacrificing their productivity or user experience.
  2. Leverage phishing-resistant MFA to access secure resources: Many cyberattacks start with phishing messages that lead users to infected websites and attempt to steal credentials. The use of phishing-resistant MFA, as recommended by M-22-09, can protect personnel from sophisticated online attacks. BeyondCorp Enterprise supports strong phishing-resistant authentication, by allowing factors such as Titan Security Keys to be used as attributes in access policies that are enforced at the application layer. Organizations can customize how to incorporate phishing-resistant MFA methods into their access policies for individual applications and resources. Phishing protection is also built into the Chrome browser, powered by Google Safe Browsing, and these capabilities block access to malicious content, detect phishing sites, prevent malware transfers, and generate reports of unsafe activity, adding even more protection against bad actors.
  1. Use context-aware authorization: The U.S. federal strategy states that a Zero Trust architecture should incorporate more granularly and dynamically defined permissions and that every request for access should be evaluated to determine whether it is appropriate. With context-aware authorization, organizations can build and customize access policies to include different contextual signals about a user including their role, their location, and even the time of day. Every interaction between a user and a BeyondCorp-protected resource is evaluated in real-time against the resource’s access policy to ensure users are and remain authorized to access it, with continuous authorization for all interactions at a per request level.
  2. Incorporate device-level signal into authentication: At Google, we believe that trust must be granted based on what is known about a user’s identity and their device. We are pleased that OMB similarly recommends that authentication incorporate at least one device-level signal alongside identity information. Since BeyondCorp Enterprise supports device-level attributes without requiring users to install agents, this can be done easily by leveraging the Endpoint Verification extension in the Chrome browser, where administrators can gather endpoint security posture information and easily construct and implement granular resource access policies. The ability to collect and utilize this information through an agentless approach is especially helpful for BeyondCorp Enterprise customers who support a workforce with bring-your-own-device policies or unmanaged devices.
  3. Include the extended workforce in your Zero Trust strategy: A Zero Trust approach aimed to provide secure access to the right users, at the right time, and for the right purposes should be inclusive of all users, not just full-time staff. Government agencies rely on contractors and partners to carry out many important missions. Unfortunately, the extended workforce is often more vulnerable to attacks if they are given too much privileged access or if their security practices are not properly assessed before access is provisioned. At the same time, federal administrators can’t always manage third-party devices or software directly, which can make secure access challenging.

BeyondCorp Enterprise supports a feature called protected profiles, an ideal solution for granting Zero Trust access to the extended workforce. It enables users to securely access resources from unmanaged devices and be protected by the same security capabilities without needing to install agents. Furthermore, administrators can gain visibility into risky activities and view any security events that are generated from within protected profiles.

Applying the NCSC Zero Trust principles on Google Cloud


Last year, the U.K. government’s NCSC launched its Zero Trust architecture design principles to help organizations securely adopt a Zero Trust architecture. To help private and public sector organizations in the U.K., the Google Cybersecurity Action Team (GCAT) released a detailed research paper that outlines how organizations can leverage Google Cloud technologies and services to align with these principles. This is a technical guide aimed at enterprise and security architects charged with developing and executing a Zero Trust strategy under the principles outlined by the NCSC, including:

  • Know your architecture, including users, devices, services and data with Google Cloud Professional Services Organization (PSO) who can support discovery, planning and risk mitigation.
  • Know your User, Service and Device identities including reference architectures for Cloud Identity.
  • Assess your user behavior, device and service health by leveraging built in reporting from Google Cloud and Chronicle.
  • Use policies to authorize requests with BeyondCorp Enterprise policy-based authorization.
  • Authenticate & Authorize everywhere by reviewing the BeyondCorp and BeyondProd frameworks which combine to deliver ubiquitous authentication and authorization.
  • Focus your monitoring on users, devices and services with device management and Cloud native monitoring capabilities.
  • Don’t trust any network, including your own. Review details on Google’s Secure by Design infrastructure.
  • Choose services designed for Zero Trust. Review how to protect modern and legacy applications with BeyondCorp.

For more detail on how we’re supporting the U.K.’s NCSC, please review our recent research paper for insight into their priorities, and where Google will be discussing Secure by Design principles and how to respond to security incidents.

Zero Trust assessment and planning services for organizations


Organizations that are managing complex environments while undergoing Zero Trust adoption could benefit strongly from experienced support and guidance. The Google Cybersecurity Action Team (GCAT) is committed to helping customers meet Zero Trust security and compliance requirements in the cloud through specialized consulting engagements and workshops for public sector customers. Read more about how growing cybersecurity requirements for U.S. federal government customers via executive orders and White House mandates are being supported through Google Cloud solutions.

GCAT’s multi-week Zero Trust Foundations engagement helps organizations build a strategy to achieve a Zero Trust security model across their operations. Zero Trust Foundations is co-delivered by Google Cloud’s Office of the CISO and our public sector Professional Services Organization. It can help focus and accelerate customers’ Zero Trust efforts by sharing lessons learned from Google’s own BeyondCorp zero-trust journey, and our global implementation of defense-in-depth best practices. Contact us today to learn more.

To learn more about ways Google Cloud can help organizations embarking on a Zero Trust journey, tune into our second annual Google Cloud Security Summit on May 17 and hear directly from customers who are already using our Zero Trust solutions to achieve their organization’s security goals.

About the Authors:
Jeanette Manfra is the former Assistant Director for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency at the Department of Homeland Security. Dan Prieto is the former Director of the Defense Industrial Base Cybersecurity program at the Department of Defense. Both Dan and Jeanette also served in the White House on the staff of the National Security Council’s cybersecurity directorate.

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Modernize Your Security Posture for Cloud-Native Applications with Anthos

Modern security approaches have moved beyond a traditional perimeter-based security model. As many organizations seek to adopt cloud-native architectures and are deploying applications in hybrid and multi-cloud environments they demand a more flexible and extensible approach towards security.

Learn how to address security issues as early in the development and deployment life-cycle as possible—when addressing security issues can be less costly—and do so in a way that is standardized and consistent. Help keep your organization secure and compliant with Anthos.

Case Study

The Right Datawarehouse Helps Fight Climate Change, While Improving Customer Experience

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Committed to decarbonizing the transport industry and decongesting cities, Acciona Mobility chose Google Cloud to build a scalable and reliable IT infrastructure to support its long-term vision. The result? Great uptime leading to very positive ratings.

When you think about climate change, you might not consider a daily commute to work or a drive around town as big contributing factors. And yet, transport is the fastest growing source of CO2 emissions from fossil fuel, which in turn is the largest contributor to climate change. This is the key insight behind the mission of Spanish carbon-neutral multinational Acciona. The group, which provides sustainable solutions for infrastructure and renewable energy projects across 65 countries, launched an electric scooter sharing service called Acciona Mobility in 2018.

Aiming to contribute to the decarbonization of the transport sector while helping relieve traffic congestion within cities, Acciona Mobility enables users to rent electric scooters powered 100% by energy from renewable sources. Users can find, reserve, and rent the scooters at the tap of their mobile screens via the Acciona Mobility application and pay on the basis of minutes spent riding. The app, which is available free to download online, is also the gateway through which new users can register for the service, which welcomes anyone with a valid driver’s license for motorbikes. After having their right to drive, identity, and card details validated, citizens can start enjoying the service, available 24 hours a day, every day of the year.

“We needed to deploy a reliable infrastructure for a new service before understanding exactly what its scale and demand would be. Our strategy was to adopt a serverless architecture that can grow with us to sustain our long-term vision. This kind of thinking led us directly to Google Cloud.”

Jose Luis Rosell, CIO Services Division, Acciona

“Acciona Mobility is exciting because it stems from our vision to make people’s lives easier in a sustainable way,” says Jose Luis Rosell, CIO of Acciona’s Services Division. “40% of the pollution near cities comes from private transportation. We want to help solve that problem with zero-carbon, electric, multimodal transportation that’s also convenient for people to use.”

However, Jose Luis says that building the appropriate IT infrastructure to bring the new service to life required external support. “We needed to deploy a reliable infrastructure for a new service before understanding exactly what its scale and demand would be. Our strategy was to adopt a serverless architecture that can grow with us to sustain our long-term vision,” he explains. “This kind of thinking led us directly to Google Cloud.”

Developing the transportation platform of the future

Because Acciona was already a Google Cloud customer, Jose Luis and his team reached the decision to develop the new service on Google Cloud with ease, as he explains: “We had a very positive experience working closely with the Google Cloud team during Acciona’s first project on Google Cloud, and that collaborative mentality is very important for us. We feel Google Cloud is a trustworthy partner that is willing to take risks with us and is flexible enough to lead us through business uncertainty with the right technology,” he says. “So we were confident that its technology and people could help us bring the Acciona Mobility service from theory to reality.”

This time, Acciona partnered with cloud consultancy Altostratus as well, to consult on a selection of Google Cloud products that would help develop the application quickly by making use of managed services. Acciona’s strategy was to launch the new services first in Madrid, where the company is headquartered, and then spread the vision across more cities later, if the idea worked out well in practice. Due to the scale of the project and its data needs, BigQuery was chosen as the primary data warehouse to store all the information related to the service, such as the location of scooters and their availability status. With all its data readily available on BigQuery, Acciona is able to run specific queries that help it to gain insights such as which urban areas have the highest volume of scooters being rented. Knowing this, Acciona can reorganize availability to make sure there are always enough scooters in that specific location.

Integrating it with Pub/Sub and Dataflow, Acciona ensures that the data generated by scooters is ingested and processed in real time so that users searching for scooters nearby, using the Acciona Mobility application on their phones, can always have up-to-date information at hand. Using Google Maps Platform APIs such as the Directions API, Acciona’s mobile app translates the geographical coordinates of scooters into an easy-to-read address displayed beside a visual map. Using Cloud SQL, Acciona automates the storage capacity management of the database as the number of scooters and active users grow.

Meanwhile, Google Cloud Armor protects the service against cyber breaches and distributed denial of service attacks to keep it running uninterrupted. In addition, Google Cloud itself helps to reinforce the cyber security measures with secure-by-default managed services, such as data encryption. “The managed services mean more resilience and more uptime, because we don’t need to worry about maintenance or external threats,“ says Jose Luis of the solutions protecting all information generated by the new service, which as CIO is a topic he holds dearly. “I face cybersecurity issues more confidently as a Google Cloud partner,” he adds.

“Today, we have data coming in every 15 seconds from 10,000 electric scooters around Europe. BigQuery and Cloud SQL-managed services help us handle that data very carefully and with precision so that our users don’t experience any lags when searching for scooters or returning them.”

Jose Luis Rosell, CIO Services Division, Acciona

Expanding an 100% sustainable transport solution throughout Spain

Within two months of the decision to deploy Acciona Mobility on Google Cloud, the service was ready for launch, filling the streets of Madrid with 500 electric scooters that run 100% on renewable energy. By 2020, the number of scooters has grown to 10,000 and the service has scaled to multiple cities in and outside of Spain, including Lisbon, Milan, and Rome. To date, more than 3.5 million intracity rides have used the Acciona Mobility app, reducing CO2 emissions by more than 1,000 tons.

“Today, we have data coming in every 15 seconds from 10,000 electric scooters around Europe. BigQuery and Cloud SQL-managed services help us handle that data very carefully and with precision so that our users don’t experience any lags when searching for scooters or returning them,” says Jose Luis of the fast-growing scale of the project.

“Google Cloud enables us to keep our services always available and to scale quickly to respond to its growing demand. Our ratings have been very positive as a result. More importantly, our vision of transportation as a cleaner, more sustainable commodity is really spreading and resonating with the public.”

Jose Luis Rosell, CIO Services Division, Acciona

Set to continue expanding, Acciona is using Google Kubernetes Engine to make sure the Acciona Mobility application has the computing capacity it needs to continue scaling to reach new markets and serve more users. On that note, Google operations tools (formerly Stackdriver) are also being deployed to help monitor, troubleshoot, and improve the performance of the application as it scales.

“Google Cloud enables us to keep our services always available and to scale quickly to respond to its growing demand. Our ratings have been very positive as a result. More importantly, our vision of transportation as a cleaner, more sustainable commodity is really spreading and resonating with the public,” he concludes.

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Introducing New Capabilities for Secure Transformations

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With our vision of invisible security, Team Google Cloud continues to add advanced capabilities to platforms and simplify operations for stronger security outcomes. Here are five major security announcements made at Next '22. Read more!

Organizations large and small are realizing that digital transformation and the changing threat landscape require a grounds up effort to transform security. At Google Cloud, we continue to invest in our vision of invisible security where advanced capabilities are engineered into our platforms, operations are simplified, and stronger security outcomes can be achieved.

We made five major security announcements at Google Cloud Next:

Today at Next ‘22, we’re introducing additional new security products, partnerships, and solutions across security analytics, anti-fraud measures, device security, Zero Trust, and open source software security to help our customers around the world address their most pressing security challenges.

Our Assured Open Source Software service, which we announced earlier this year, is now available in Preview. Assured OSS enables enterprise and public sector users of open source software to easily incorporate the same trusted OSS packages that Google uses into their own developer workflows. You can sign up for the Preview of Assured OSS here.

Security teams must continually measure and manage risk in their cloud environments. Earlier this year we acquired Foreseeti, a startup focused on attack simulation and risk quantification. We’re excited to announce that the integration of Foreseeti’s groundbreaking technology, which can help teams understand their exposure and prioritize contextualized vulnerability findings, will be coming to Security Command Center in Preview in Q4. Security Command Center will use Forseeti’s advanced attack path simulations to help you apply targeted remediations before attackers can take advantage of high-risk vulnerabilities.

To help organizations better manage risks in their online channels, reCAPTCHA Enterprise and Signifyd will partner to bring to market a joint anti-fraud and abuse solution. This solution will combine the behavioral analysis capabilities of reCAPTCHA Enterprise with the anti-fraud capabilities of Signifyd to help enterprises reduce abuse, account takeovers, and payment fraud.

We continue to invest in new initiatives with our BeyondCorp Alliance partners. Palo Alto Networks customers can now pair Prisma Access with BeyondCorp Enterprise Essentials to help secure private and SaaS app access while mitigating internet threats across managed and unmanaged devices with a secure enterprise browsing experience.

We now package best practices and implementation experience for our customers in Zero Trust Advisory solutions. Our Cybersecurity Action Team and select partners can help guide you through the Zero Trust journey with exploratory workshops, architecture reviews, customized recommendations, and implementation support.

Google Cloud Armor, which was instrumental in stopping the largest Layer 7 DDoS attack to date, was named a Strong Performer in The Forrester Wave™: Web Application Firewalls, Q3 2022. This is our debut in the WAF Wave, and it’s encouraging to see the recognition for the product in this market segment.

Google Workspace has received several security updates and advances. They bring data loss prevention (DLP) to Google Chat to help prevent sensitive information leaks, new Trust rules for Google Drive for more granular control of internal and external sharing, and Client-side encryption (CSE) in Gmail and Google Calendar to help address a broad range of data sovereignty and compliance requirements. You can learn more in our Workspace blog.

Learn more at Google Cloud Next

Our growing team at Google Cloud Security remains focused on delivering solutions that can make governments and enterprises safer with Google, in our trusted cloud and through products that bring our security capabilities to on-premises environments and other clouds. Learn more about these announcements and capabilities by attending the Security sessions at Google Cloud Next all this week and on-demand soon after.

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Efficient, Safe and Dynamic Gaming Experience: Aristocrat’s Digital Journey on Google Cloud

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Gaming company and its subsidiaries tapped into new markets and new users which required centralized platform to monitor data and application security across systems. Google Cloud and Splunk addressed this requirement and ups the gaming experiences!

Since Aristocrat’s founding in 1953, technology has constantly transformed gaming and the digital demands on our gaming business are a far cry from challenges we faced when we started. As we continue to expand globally, security and compliance are top priorities.

Managing IT security for several gaming subsidiaries and our core business became more complex as we entered into new markets and scaled up our number of users. We needed a centralized platform that could give us full visibility into all of our systems and efficient monitoring capabilities to keep data and applications secure. We also needed the ability to secure our systems without compromising user experiences.

We turned to Google Cloud and Splunk to better manage complexity and support highly efficient, secure, and more dynamic gaming experiences for everyone. We are committed to using today’s modern technologies to give players more optimal experiences.

Bringing our digital footprint into the cloud


When we set out on our digital transformation, we looked to address many business requirements.

These requirements included:

  • Regulation: We wanted a platform that could efficiently address our industry’s stringent and global regulatory compliance requirements.
  • Player experience: Our IT environment must support smooth gaming experiences to keep users engaged and satisfied.
  • Scalability: As we grow and diversify, meeting the changing demands of an increasingly global gaming community, we need an easily scalable platform to align with our current and future needs.

Google Cloud offered us the perfect foundation through solutions such as Compute Engine, Google Kubernetes Engine, BigQuery, and Google Cloud Storage. These acted as the right infrastructure components for us for the following reasons:

  • Google Cloud is globally accessible and supports compliance, helping to streamline security and regulatory processes for our team.
  • With Google Cloud, we can manage our entire development and delivery processes globally with fast and efficient reconciliation of regional compliance requirements.
  • When we need to adjust existing infrastructure or deliver new capabilities, Google Cloud accelerates the process and takes the heavy lifting off of our team.
  • Google Cloud allows us to support tens of thousands of players on each of our apps while experiencing minimal downtime and low latency. The importance of this support can’t be underestimated in an industry where players have little to no patience if lags in games occur.

We migrated our back-office IT stack alongside our consumer-facing production applications to Google Cloud given our positive experiences with compliance, security, scalability, and process management. This migration has significantly accelerated our digital transformation while streamlining our infrastructure for faster and more cost-effective performance.

In many ways, Google Cloud has been, with maybe a pun intended, a game-changer for us. For instance, when we suddenly had to support a lot of remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic, native identity and access management tools in Google Cloud allowed us to retire costly VPNs used for backend access and quickly adopt a more easily managed, cost-effective zero-trust security posture.

Accessing vital third-party partners and managed services


Aristocrat has many IT needs best addressed in a multi-cloud environment. Google Cloud is particularly attractive given its strong cloud interoperability, as well as the many products and services available on Google Cloud Marketplace. The marketplace accelerated our deployment of key third-party apps including Splunk and Qualys.

Given the personal information we store and the global regulatory compliance statutes we must oblige, security lies at the heart of our business. Splunk is a critical component of our digital transformation because it offers solutions that provide the enhanced monitoring capabilities and visibility we need. The integration between Splunk and Google Cloud gives us confidence that our data is secure. We know our data can be secure in Google Cloud, while simplified billing through Google Cloud Marketplace makes payments and license tracking easier for our procurement team.

As part of our protected environment, we use the Splunk platform as our security information and event management system, leveraging the InfoSec app for Splunk that provides continuous monitoring and advanced threat detection to significantly improve our security.

We can manipulate and present data in Splunk in a way that provides us with a single pane-of-glass for our hybrid, multi-cloud environment and our third-party apps and systems. Splunk observability tools have likewise helped us to track browser-based applications like our online gaming apps to monitor details related to security and performance.

Splunk and Google Cloud have transformed how we operate. We can now quickly ingest and analyze data at scale within our refined approach to security management by offloading software management to Splunk and Google Cloud. This ability enables us to approach security more strategically, and positions us to integrate more AI/ML capabilities into our products for even greater governance and performance.

This is just the beginning of our journey with Splunk and Google Cloud. We’re excited to see the innovation we can continue bringing to the gaming community worldwide.

Blog

Next-Level Ecommerce Engagement: Transforming User Identities with GCIP

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Discover how Google Cloud Identity Platform boosts retail customer engagement by providing secure, flexible identity management for seamless ecommerce experiences, enhancing loyalty and satisfaction. Learn about GCIP's features and benefits.

One of the fundamental questions that retailers constantly ask themselves is how well they know their customers and how they can build deeper relationships. Knowing who their customers are can have a direct impact on improving customer engagement, which can lead to increased conversion rates, customer loyalty, lifetime value, and higher return on marketing spend. 

Retailers have started to use innovative new methods like identity graphs, which connect information from multiple sources such as internal databases, marketing systems, online interactions and social media platforms. While these new methods have shown promise, the best and most effective approach remains customer self-identification through an authentication process.

As a result, retailers require a sophisticated user identity platform that protects customer information with proper authentication and authorization, one which incorporates advanced mechanisms like multi-factor authentication and intelligent account protection, to ensure customer information is protected throughout its lifecycle. 

Google Cloud Identity Platform (GCIP) is a customer identity and access management (CIAM) solution that can enable retailers (and any other organization) to add identity and access management capabilities to online applications. GCIP is easy to administer and develop with, and is able to grow with an organization’s online user base.

With a customer identity and access management (CIAM) solution like GCIP, a retailer can quickly and easily implement powerful identity management and security capabilities such as:

  • Advanced authentication through email or SMS/text messaging.
  • Quicker onboarding with social logins from Google, Facebook and others.
  • Flexibility to support external identity providers through identity federation.
  • Support for multi-tenant B2B use cases with the ability to create unique silos of users and configurations.
  • Easy to use interfaces and libraries to help web/mobile application developers quickly integrate and launch. 
  • Broad authentication protocol support, including SAML 2.0, OAuth/OIDC or simple email- and password-based authentication.
  • Built on Google Cloud’s planet-scale infrastructure to support a growing customer base.

How does it work?

GCIP allows end users to authenticate to web and mobile applications. For retailers, this could be their online shopping app for mobile devices or an ecommerce website accessible over the internet through a web browser.

Users can sign-in with their email/passwords, phone numbers or using their social logins . If the organization uses an existing OpenID Connect (OIDC) provider, a Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML 2.0) provider or even a custom authentication system which issues signed tokens, Google Cloud Identity platform can be used as the authentication orchestrator.

Using Google Cloud Identity Platform as the primary authentication system

GCIP can serve as the primary authentication system, meaning users are provisioned into GCIP. In this case, the end user identities are securely persisted in the “account store” database. The database is a part of fully managed GCIP services and needs no provisioning or scaling from the retailer as their end user base grows. A high level architectural overview of how this flow may look like is shown below:

https://storage.googleapis.com/gweb-cloudblog-publish/images/1_Google_Cloud_Identity_Platform.max-1700x1700.png

Using Google Cloud Identity Platform with social logins

Google Cloud Identity Platform can also be used with popular social logins such as Google, Facebook and others. This gives users a familiar option and eliminates the need to provision users in the GCIP identity store. Below is a high-level architecture diagram showing how GCIP integrates with the social login providers.

https://storage.googleapis.com/gweb-cloudblog-publish/images/2_Google_Cloud_Identity_Platform.max-1800x1800.png

Customizing user flows

Many organizations want to be able to customize their login flows. Sometimes, an organization wants to make data related to new user creation and user logins (barring the passwords) available to other systems. These systems can include analytical systems, recommendations or promotions engines (such as sending welcome emails and promotions upon new sign-ups,) security operations (for example, to run analysis on sign-in requests to help detect account takeover attempts,) customer master data management systems, and customer data platforms. GCIP supports blocking functions and asynchronous functions to help customize the login flows and enable syndication of the login or sign-up activity related data to external systems.

Next steps

Google Cloud Identity Platform can provide a robust, scalable, secure-by-design mechanism for managing and authenticating users to online apps. To learn more about GCIP and how it can benefit your organization, please check out the documentation.

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