Yesterday Google announced a new product aimed specifically at Google Apps' enterprise customers. The service, powered by Google acquisition Postini with technology from ScanSafe, is called Google Web Security for Enterprise and it offers real-time malware protection and URL filtering with policy enforcement and reporting. Essentially, it's a big Google firewall in the cloud.

What It Does

Google Web Security for Enterprise provides three main areas of protection: 1) web virus and spyware protection, 2) web filtering and content control, and 3) protection for roaming and remote users. Services such as these aren't anything new to I.T. administrators, but they often come in the form of expensive software suites, hardware appliances, or, more often, a combination of both. With the Google Web Security product, the goal is to provide enterprises with the same type of security and protection that they are used to, but all under the Google brand.

Controlling Web Access for End Users

How It Compares

The advantage of using a service such as this over a hardware firewall solution for example, is that with the firewall the protections offered to remote workers would only be activated when an employee is connected to the company network via VPN. With the Google Web Security for Enterprise service, which can't be disabled by the end user, workers would always be protected.

However, when comparing the Google offering to some other enterprise level software products, like Symantec's Endpoint Protection suite for example, the Google product comes up short in a few areas. Although this particular Symantec product doesn't offer web content filtering, it does provide certain fine-grained application and device controls. These are tools which let I.T. admins lock down endpoints to prevent data leakage by controlling access to specific processes, files, and folders by users and other applications as well as by controlling what peripherals can be connected to a machine.

The Google product does not address these concerns which are still very much a factor in larger organizations or those that deal with sensitive data, so I.T. administrators would still have to utilize other software suites in addition to the Web Security for Enterprise product to provide complete endpoint protection.

Web Security-as-a-Service

That being said, this new service is definitely moving Google closer to being a true competitor in the realm of enterprise security, as they already offer email security and compliance tools. Plus, the convenience of having all the services available in the cloud makes this a compelling offering if the price, yet to be announced, is right.