Established companies in any industry, including telecommunications, often take a cautious approach when it comes to adopting new technology. This is true of any technology and especially of tools used across entire organizations and at all levels—like collaboration and communication tools. I joined Optiva Inc. as its Chief Marketing Officer in August 2018, and right off the bat I faced the need for cloud-based productivity and collaboration tools like Google Workspace (formerly G Suite), which was new to me. 

Optiva was in the midst of making an organization-wide change to implement Google Workspace productivity and collaboration tools. Employees at that time—at Optiva and across other organizations I used to work with—primarily collaborated by attaching documents to company emails and meeting their colleagues in office corridors. Meetings were almost always in person or via phone. These processes were inefficient and contributed to version-control confusion and decreased overall productivity. They were also based on our pre-COVID world.

Today, Optiva is a fully remote-first organization, and our employees use all the tools in Google Workspace. Collaboration has increased dramatically, surprising even initial skeptics. Occasionally we still encounter resistance from new employees who are used to a different way of working. This is logical, but more often than not, they thank us later, and many have told me that they see the value for their productivity and the entire organization’s collaboration. 

Google Workspace has become a real advantage, especially for a global company like Optiva with employees across the world and in so many different time zones. Instead of waiting for team members’ availability to review or collaborate on a document, wasting time coordinating who works on the latest version, or who is the “owner” of a deck, employees can open a document, view new changes, and add updates, even when others are working on the same document in parallel.  

Google Workspace promotes business as usual during COVID-19

The combination of Optiva’s remote-first policy and Google Workspace collaboration tools proved a welcome addition during the challenges posed by COVID-19. Optiva was ahead of the curve of remote working policies in the telecommunications industry and in the software industry as a whole, so when the work-at-home orders went into effect in March last year, Optiva’s business charged ahead without missing a beat.

Google Meet has helped us maintain a strong corporate culture during this challenging time. For example, we constantly use video conferencing, which has been a great way to see the entire team and get a real sense for how each employee is doing—professionally as well as personally. Using Google Chat allowed us to keep in touch with everyone across our global teams. It helps us ensure that everyone feels secure and can work during this challenging time. Also, we have continued to create new teams with employees all around the world. If we attempted to onboard or train them using conference calls or emails, the experience wouldn’t be the same. Meet has helped us develop the strongest teams possible, faster, and much more effectively. 

We also use Google Workspace tools to cross-train employees on tasks and processes in departments outside their own. That way, if one of our employees has to be out of the office unexpectedly, the company benefits from full business continuity. To make this possible, various teams and departments documented their specific processes, held training sessions on Meet, and recorded them so any employee could access them on demand.

Many struggled in the early days of the self-quarantine orders, especially when it came to the sudden need to select and deploy new technologies for remote collaboration and, more importantly, to keep supporting their customers. We were fortunate that our business was unphased—and we owe a lot of this success to Google Workspace.

Ocado is the world’s largest online-only grocery store. But Ocado isn’t your typical corner grocery store. For one thing, there’s no corner as we’re an online-only grocery retailer reaching British households, and now with a fast-growing non-food business alongside. Our customers shop online using our award-winning webshop or mobile apps and then their orders are picked and packed in one of our huge automated warehouses, the largest of their kind in the world; hours later, our vans deliver to their kitchens in one-hour delivery slots.

Google Workspace allows us to do things our way, wherever and whenever we want. Our staff use Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Drive to stay on top of their day to day work, and Google+ is helping our teams stay in touch, share information and build local communities. Ultimately, all of these tools help to make sure our customers get the groceries they order, on time and in the best possible condition.

But we didn’t stop there. We looked at other ways we could use Google’s technology to help us run our business and started using Google App Engine for building internal applications. For example, we used App Engine to create a new version of our “Where’s My Order” application, which our customers will soon be using to find out where their orders are within our production cycle. Once their order is on the road, the integration with Google Maps allows them to see exactly where their delivery van is. So we’re taking what used to be a chore, grocery shopping, and making it a simple experience that you can do from the convenience of your own home, or wherever you may be.

Our most recent project was on Google Compute Engine. Within our warehouses there are certain tasks that are repetitive and arduous for humans to do, like picking heavy six packs of bottled water into customer orders. So our robotics team is developing solutions that use robots to automate these sorts of tasks and thus release staff for other more important work. But these robots need sophisticated 3D vision systems to enable them to see what they are doing. These are very computationally intensive applications and by providing the instantly flexible and scalable computing power to crunch all those numbers, Compute Engine provided the perfect solution. And, we are already using the cloud to store and process some of the huge volumes of data that our business spits out every minute.

But with an eye to future growth and international expansion, we have plans to use Compute Engine and Cloud Storage to move other parts of our production systems to the cloud. So walk into an Ocado warehouse in the future and you might run into a robot if you’re not careful. Like I said, we’re not your typical corner grocery store.

*Google Workspace was formerly known as G Suite

As the way people work continues to evolve, keeping security policies in place that protect organizations but give workers the ability to get things done is more important than ever. IT and security teams must aim to stay a step ahead of web-based security threats that come their organization’s way. To help, the Center for Internet Security (CIS) team has released the latest CIS Benchmark 2.1 for Google Chrome. This Benchmark offers independent recommendations on which Chrome policies to configure to help support organizations’ security and compliance needs. Thanks to Chrome being built with security at its core, in many cases, Chrome default settings are aligned with CIS recommendations.

Chrome is secure by default, but we also pride ourselves on providing customizations for enterprises to allow Chrome to better fit the needs of their business. And with hundreds of policies available through Chrome Browser Cloud Management and Group Policy Objects (Note: The CIS Benchmark is also available as a GPO), organizations can do just that. 

Throughout the CIS guide you’ll notice that there are different designations for configuration profiles. Any labeled Level 1, are considered to be a good baseline for an organization. Level 2 profiles are recommended for deployments that require the highest level of security, but note that these settings could have a trade off on user productivity. We recommend looking at each setting and determining if it’s a good fit for your business. 

The benchmark is made up of five sections:

• Enforced Defaults — Notes policies that are configured by default when you install Chrome. Enforcing these settings at an enterprise level can prevent these settings from being changed by business users to less secure options.
• Attack Surface Reduction — Details how to disable web features that may not be necessary in your enterprise environment and could reduce your overall attack surface.
• Privacy — Surfaces settings that improve user privacy.
• Data Loss Prevention — Contains settings that can help prevent data loss and protect your organization’s data. (Note: These recommendations cover additional capabilities that can be added to Chrome through BeyondCorp Enterprise). 
• Forensics (Post Incident) — Shares recommendations on policies that give insights into post incident forensics and analysis. 

Organizations can use these benchmarks to optimize the best way to secure Chrome in their environment. Download the CIS Benchmark here and check out our team’s configuration guide for additional recommendations on how to configure Chrome.

Note: This benchmark was created using a consensus review process composed of subject matter experts. Consensus participants provide perspective from a diverse set of backgrounds such as consulting, software development, audit and compliance, security  research, operations, government, and legal. While these recommendations come from a trusted source, it’s important for each organization to weigh which policies make the most sense for their business.