Employees use tools at their disposal to get work done, but if these tools (often legacy) hamper collaboration or are inflexible, they’ll turn to less secure options for the sake of convenience. According to Gartner, a third of successful attacks experienced by enterprises will come from Shadow IT usage by 2020. 

And this problem is not unknown. Eighty-three percent of IT professionals reported that employees stored company data in unsanctioned cloud services, a challenge especially apparent with file sync and share tools. When people work around their legacy systems to use tools like Google Drive, it’s often because they find their current systems to be clunky or that they can’t collaborate with others as easily. They’re unable to do three key things in legacy file sync and share systems (like Microsoft SharePoint):

1. Unable to work on their phones. By now, people expect to be able to work on the go—and this means not just opening an attachment, but actually making edits to and comments on work. It gives them freedom to work when it’s convenient for them and to help teammates anytime. 

2. Unable to create workspaces independently and easily. This might sound counterintuitive, but if an employee needs to contact IT to have a new project folder made on a drive, the bar is too high. Employees need to be able to quickly, and independently, create documents that can be shared simply because of the changing nature of collaboration. Work happens ad-hoc, on the go (like we mentioned above), and with people inside and outside of your organization. If someone has to contact IT to create a new folder, they’re more likely to neglect the request or use a different tool altogether to get started. 

3. Unable to make the data work for them. Traditional file storage is just that, storage. Like an attic, we store things in these systems, but at some point stuff gets stale and it’s hard to tell what we should keep or pitch. People need their storage systems to not only house their data, but to help them categorize and find information quicker so that they can make this data work better for them.

You have two choices when it comes to making a decision on file sync and share systems:

Option 1: Continue to let your employees work on unsanctioned products, some of which may open your business up to unintended security issues (and, in some instances, scary terms of service).

Option 2: Buy the tools that your users want to use because these tools are making them more productive.

If you want to create a more productive workforce, take cues from your employees. Your tools should not only meet the highest security standards for IT, but let people work the way they want to (and be intelligent enough to guide them along the way).

Imagine if your technology could flag that a file contains confidential information before an employee accidentally shares it. Or surface files as they’re needed to help people work faster. Google Drive does this.

Remember, if the technology doesn’t suit your employees, they’re just going to work around it anyway. Instead of investing time and resources on routine maintenance, shift this energy toward helping your employees stay productive in ways that work for both you and them.

At AirAsia, we operate a fleet of more than 270 aircraft across 23 markets, fly to more than 150 destinations and carry 100m guests each year. We’ve also been named the world’s best low-cost carrier for 11 years running. To accomplish all of this, we rely heavily on our 22,000 Allstars (employees). As AirAsia co-founder Tony Fernandes likes to say, “it has always been about the people.”

With Cloud Identity in place, our IT department can spend less time worrying about managing multiple on-premises directory servers and and can instead focus on delivering value to our Allstar employees.
–Declan Hogan, Group CIO, AirAsia

In my role as CIO, it’s critical that I give our Allstars the tools and technology they need to get their jobs done, while at the same time ensuring that our company’s data is protected and secure. While this is challenging enough in normal circumstances, we’re also in the midst of rapidly moving from legacy on-premises technologies to the cloud. Google Cloud has been a critical partner for us in this journey.

Identity Challenges

AirAsia, like many other enterprises, has relied on a legacy on-premises directory for many years. As our company has quickly grown and expanded to new markets and regions, we’ve had to manage multiple servers across a number of on-premises data centers and the public cloud, which has proved costly and time-consuming.

Our Allstars, located all across Asia, need to easily access a number of legacy on-premises apps in addition to a growing number of SaaS apps. As a business, we also needed a more seamless integration between our HR system of record and our identity solution for user provisioning and lifecycle management.

Deploying Cloud Identity is a key step towards enabling the BeyondCorp (or zero trust) security model, which we feel is the best approach to strengthen our security posture and fight modern threats.
–Declan Hogan, Group CIO, AirAsia

Solving these challenges with our existing on-premises directory was simply not feasible for us.

In recent years, we partnered with Google Cloud to help drive our digital transformation, including moving dozens of workloads and apps to Google Cloud Platform (GCP), deploying G Suite as our collaboration and productivity solution for all of our employees, and replacing thousands of Windows laptops with fast and secure Chromebooks.

We brought up our identity concerns with the Google Cloud team, and after a number of conversations, we decided to deploy Cloud Identity, Google’s cloud-based identity and access management solution, to help address the identity challenges we were facing.

Why Cloud Identity for AirAsia?

We ended up choosing Cloud Identity for a few key reasons. Here at AirAsia, we are eager to move to the cloud as quickly as possible, and moving identity management to the cloud is a key enabler of this and our broader digital transformation. Managing identities from the cloud also enables us to have a single identity and set of credentials for each employee, which they can use to access all of the applications they need to be productive, both in the cloud and on-premises.

In addition, deploying Cloud Identity is a key step towards enabling the BeyondCorp (or zero trust) security model, which we feel is the best approach to strengthen our security posture and fight modern threats.

Cloud Identity also integrates seamlessly with our existing technologies, which includes not only Google Cloud products like GCP, G Suite, and Chrome OS, but also third party tools like Citrix, Papercut, and others.

And finally, Cloud Identity offered us significant cost and resource savings. With Cloud Identity in place, our IT department can spend less time worrying about managing multiple on-premises directory servers and and can instead focus on delivering value to our Allstar employees.

To help organizations confidently move their sensitive data to the cloud, Google Cloud works diligently to earn and maintain customer trust. Our Trusted Cloud is committed to giving you a secure foundation that you can verify and independently control. Discovery and protection of sensitive data are integral parts of Google Cloud’s strategy to safeguard customer data. With this as our longstanding approach to protecting customers, we are happy to share that Forrester Research has ranked Google Cloud a Leader in The Forrester Wave™ Data Security Platforms Q1 2023.

Relentless security innovation leveraging Google’s core strengths

Google keeps more people safe online than anyone else. The scale at which we operate allows us to pioneer approaches to cloud-native security and then bring them to commercial and public sector organizations everywhere they operate. Leveraging our data processing and novel analytics capabilities with artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) allows our technology to help protect enterprises and their end users. At the core of our data security capabilities is our data loss prevention (DLP) technology, which enables customers to discover, classify, and de-identify data in real-time, on-demand, continuously, and in event-driven workloads.

In their explanation for the ranking, Forrester noted in its report “Cloud-first, Google has notable areas of innovation focus, such as harnessing machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI), productizing internal innovations, and co-innovation with partners in areas like confidential computing, data sovereignty controls, and external cloud key management services.”

Embedded across multiple Google products

Our platform supports the discovery of corporate assets in Chrome Enterprise and Google Workspace applications including Gmail and Google Drive. We also provide support for discovering production and analytical assets such as object storage, relational databases, data warehouses, data lakes, production apps, and workloads such as migration/ETL. This technology identifies and detects various types of sensitive data using a comprehensive set of built-in infoType detectors that are ready to use out-of-the-box along with flexible custom detection options and rules. Types of sensitive data include personal identifiable information and personal health information (PII/PHI), financial identifiers, health context, multi-cloud credentials/secrets, and ML-based full document classification (including source code, SEC filings, and legal briefings).

Driven by Zero Trust principles

The Forrester Wave identified the 14 top significant data security platform providers. Forrester notes in the report that “[Google] also stands out for manageability and integrations for Zero Trust.” and “Google is a strong choice for organizations considering or currently using GCP as well as those using Google Workspace who are taking a Zero Trust approach to enabling bring your own device (BYOD) and remote work.”

Delivering value for our customers

We are honored to be a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Data Security Platforms, Q1 2023 report. We look forward to continuing to innovate with you and make your digital transformation journey safer with our Trusted Cloud.

A copy of the full report can be viewed here.

More people than ever have been conducting more of their lives online due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This creates a new landscape for fraudsters to create and release new attacks. Research commissioned by Forrester Consulting showed 84% of companies have seen an increase in bot attacks. 71% of organizations have seen an increase in the amount of successful attacks. 65% of businesses have experienced more frequent attacks and greater revenue loss due to bot attacks. With so many people visiting government websites to learn more about the COVID-19 vaccine, make vaccine appointments, or file for unemployment, these web pages have become prime targets for bot attacks and other abusive activities. But reCAPTCHA Enterprise has helped state governments protect COVID-19 vaccine registration portals and unemployment claims portals from abusive activities.

Assisting with unemployment claims during COVID-19

Alongside the wave of unemployment claims caused by COVID-19, many state government agencies, such as Wisconsin’s Workforce Development, have seen an increase in attempted malicious bot logins on their external websites. Many states have had malicious actors visit unemployment claims portals and enter stolen credentials to file fraudulent unemployment claims. Because many unemployment claims portals are mandated to pay a recipient within 2 weeks, the claims portal processes this fraudulent information and bad actors receive unemployment checks weeks before their false claims are recognized. By then, the fraudsters have their money and have repeated this process using other stolen credentials.

reCAPTCHA Enterprise helps state governments reduce false claims by preventing adversaries from automatically reusing credentials on unemployment claims portals. reCAPTCHA Enterprise’s scale and speed to determine fraudster behavior across the Internet helped some of the largest states in the United States, such as Texas. 

Registering for the COVID-19 Vaccine and accessing state-sponsored resources

Several states, such as Pennsylvania, are challenged by web traffic that fluctuates based on the COVID-19 Vaccine Phase. For example, during Phase 1, there was a large increase in web traffic from both humans and bots because of the demand for the very few available vaccination slots. As more states move into Phase 2 and Phase 3, and the vaccine is more widely available, traffic is increasing because bad actors know more people are coming to these websites to register to be vaccinated. 

reCAPTCHA Enterprise was implemented to stop bad actors from scripting bots to book vaccine appointments and then sell those appointment slots on another website for profit. These fake web pages are falsely promoted as websites where people can register for the vaccine. Vaccine appointments are not the only government system from which fraudsters try to profit. Transportation and social service departments also face frequent attacks, wherein fraudsters try to profit by booking and then selling appointments with those organizations. 

Fending off these attacks was made easier thanks to reCAPTCHA Enterprise, a frictionless fraud detection service that leverages our experience from more than a decade of defending the internet and data for our network of more than 5 million sites. The reCAPTCHA Enterprise platform can understand fraudulent behavior, introduce friction to block bots from booking appointments, and allow legitimate users to access the vaccine portals and other state portals. 

Because reCAPTCHA Enterprise does not require end users to complete captcha challenges, several state governments installed reCAPTCHA Enterprise across search, login, and registration web pages. State governments are also placing reCAPTCHA Enterprise on webpages where end users can access healthcare, receive assistance for housing or food, register motor vehicles, or propose legislation. With reCAPTCHA Enterprise on more pages, it becomes more difficult for malicious software or bots to carry out their attacks against different pages, but not for end users to browse, login into accounts, book appointments, or apply for resources. Because reCAPTCHA Enterprise requires no action from end users to stop fraud, state governments implemented reCAPTCHA Enterprise on all points of interaction on their webpages to ensure maximum security without impacting the user experience. 

Providing security everywhere and pricing for all

Many state governments are familiar with buying cloud services in a pay-as-you-go model. reCAPTCHA Enterprise eased the purchasing process by providing state governments with predictable, scalable, and customizable pricing. State governments know up front how much they can expect to pay each month based on the number of assessments reCAPTCHA Enterprise performs. reCAPTCHA Enterprise’s flexible pricing model keeps pace with the natural fluctuations of visitors to vaccination registration and unemployment claims. reCAPTCHA Enterprise has a dedicated sales team that can tailor pricing to your specific use cases so both your webpages and budget are not compromised. 

reCAPTCHA Enterprise has helped many state governments serve their constituents by making it easier to get vaccinated and collect unemployment. It helps constituents take advantage of public services and makes it more difficult for fraudsters to manipulate and interfere with them. 

To start protecting your web pages from credential stuffing and other attacks, get started with reCAPTCHA Enterprise today.