We’ve just added two new “How To” guides for K-12 schools using Google Apps for education. These are short guides that show Google Apps for K-12 Administrators how to effectively monitor and take action on student data in Google Docs, Drive, and Sites.

1. How To Report on Collaboration and Adoption of Google Apps in K-12 Schools
   K-12 schools piloting or moving to Google Apps for Education need to understand adoption of the online productivity and collaboration suite, and need to understand how students and teachers are collaborating.
2. How To Effectively Monitor Student Documents in Google Docs, Sites, and Google Drive
   Google Apps for Education Administrators need the ability to gain “view” access to student documents in a non-disruptive way. Currently, the administrator must change the student’s password and log in as that student. This approach is manual and time consuming, and results in multiple password changes for each incident.

Both are also available as PDFs:

We’ve written a lot about what Google Drive means to companies. Now we have a video. Watch the video below as Eric Chaves shows:

• How to enable Google Drive in your domain
• How to download and install Google Drive on an end user’s computer
• How to sync files and folders using Google Drive
• How to secure corporate data in Google Drive

Well this is cool.

I was just editing a Google Doc, and saw a sidebar I’ve never seen before. Found under Tools > Research, Google has just launched a research tool, which lets you search, insert images, quotes, maps, links, and citations from within a Google Doc.

And while this may seem like a convenience that only saves a few clicks, this new feature is huge for:

• Students at schools using Google Apps that need to write papers
• Companies that use Google Docs heavily, and are constantly adding images and links to Docs
• Anyone that wants to include a Google Map in a Document.

Click on the following image to see a few of the new features.

When talking with companies looking to move to the cloud for collaboration, they often tell us that they are considering multiple solutions. Though there are many products/services that allow customers to share and synchronize files, none provide the DLP and enterprise-class security features found in the combination of Google Apps and CloudLock.

Click on the following image to see the comparison:

We just found out that CloudLock is nominated in TechCocktail’s “Who’s Boston’s Hottest Startup?” poll.

From the site:

The winner of the poll will get an opportunity to tell their story on stage at our May 14th event – Tech Cocktail Sessions Boston. Now, time to vote!

We’ve been writing a lot about Google Drive lately, and we’ve decide to package everything together in one convenient PDF called “Securing Data in Google Drive: The Enterprise Guide to Keeping Corporate Data Safe in Google Drive.”

The guide includes the following:

• What Does Google Drive Mean to Businesses?
• How To Enable Google Drive for Your Domain
• How To Install and Sync Folders on End-users’ Computers
• How To Secure Data Stored in Google Drive
• Best Practices for Protecting IP in Google Drive
• How To Protect IP in Google Drive

Get the PDF here.

What do a parachuter, digger, guard dog, astronaut, and partier all have in common? Find out in this interactive infographic!

A shift in an established paradigm is always daunting.  The Cloud represents a whole new plane for data storage.  Previous standards and security practices that worked well to safeguard on-premise data, much to the anguish of Cloud users, simply can’t be tacked onto the Cloud. The DLP solutions of past undermine the entire essence of the Cloud: collaboration.  We’ve used various analogies in the past to capture this, but this time around we’ve focused on two key comparisons to environments that most everyone has interacted with; the home and the party.

If you were to ask anyone in IT or data security circles to define DLP, chances are they would immediately say “data loss or data leakage prevention.” You’d likely hear about solutions that prevent end-users from inappropriately sharing sensitive data with an unauthorized party. From wikipedia:

“In data leakage incidents, sensitive data is disclosed to unauthorized personnel either by malicious intent or inadvertent mistake. Such sensitive data can come in the form of private or company information, intellectual property (IP), financial or patient information, credit-card data, and other information depending on the business and the industry.”

Wikipedia Definition of DLP

When it comes to on-premise data, companies have spent incredible sums of money to prevent employees from exposing confidential information, implementing in-band solutions that stop users from sharing, often resulting in overly restrictive policies. And in a world where “collaboration” meant emailing attachments back and forth, this type of DLP (while annoying), was effective.

How Does DLP Apply to the Cloud?

Fast forward a decade, and enter the cloud. Businesses today rely on real-time collaboration, both internally and externally with partners, suppliers, customers, and other third parties. Today, companies are flocking to cloud-based productivity suites like Google Apps to enable employees to collaborate in real-time, due to the cost and pain of sending multiple versions of attachments back and forth to accomplish the most basic tasks.

But the need for DLP remains. Just because data is now stored in the cloud, the importance of making sure that sensitive data is shared properly doesn’t disappear. In fact, due to the ease of collaboration with anyone, anywhere, having the ability to monitor and control how documents are shared becomes even more critical.

A New Kind of DLP for Google Docs, Drive, and Sites

Simply applying the same methods of sharing prevention for cloud data as on-premise data kills one of the biggest benefits of the cloud: collaboration. What’s the point of moving to the cloud if you’re going to throw out the real-time collaboration benefits?

Instead of using in-band prevention, why not use near real-time notification? Instead of simply stopping sharing, what if you could set up an automatic, content and context-aware policy to alert admins and data owners when a policy has been violated? What about creating a much more intelligent rule, stating that the marketing department can share documents externally with trusted vendors, but sharing with a competitor should sound an alarm and automatically change sharing permissions?

It’s time to change the way we think about Data Loss Prevention in the cloud. It’s time to embrace the concept of real-time collaboration and universal access, while enacting smart policies to alert and take action when data is shared improperly.

It’s time for DLP that is less paranoid, but equally vigilant when protecting data. DLP that allows employees to do their jobs, but keeps companies from losing the data that keeps them in business.

Potential. The word is defined in one form as ‘capable of being or becoming’. The wind is harnessed as a source of energy all around the world – clean and safe, and quite frankly a no-brainer to capture it for its amazing potential as an endless supply for consumption. And like the wind, there is so much potential energy behind the Cloud as your business’ storage solution (the new datacenter). Some organizations have recognized it, but others are more cautious. Where do you stand?

Click the image for a larger version

There are countless ways people are realizing the power held within the Cloud as the datacenter.  Here are a few of the key reasons why they’ve made the leap:

Collaboration:  Stop digging for that lost email or checking and triple checking as to whether you have the right version of the document you’re working on with a group of people.  Have a single asset that you all can work from.  That’s the power of collaboration.  Working real-time on updates while dialed in on the phone with those you’re working with saves time, increases productivity, and alleviates frustrations in searching for that stupid email from whoever sent it to you way back when.

Security: So you think the Cloud is a scary place to throw business-critical assets?  Think about that time when you sent an email reply to all by accident (TO ALL EMPLOYEES IN YOUR COMPANY) and that sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach right after you hit the send button.  OMG!  Did that email land in the wrong hands?  Can you get it back?  Nope.  The Cloud is more secure in so many ways, by keeping a central repository that can be managed.  And yes, it CAN be managed thanks to companies like CloudLock, who can provide the visibility an organization needs to ensure intellectual property is kept safe from evil-doers.

Low Administration:  I bet you are looking forward to the upgrade of that 7-year old SAN in the basement of the building, aren’t you?  I’m joking, because we all know that’s no fun.  Leave the burden of maintenance, upkeep, patching and repair up to the experts like Google, so you can focus on your core business initiatives.  Products like Google Drive are making this more possible with ample storage space for the user to house their critical assets and access them with ease.  Your IT and Security team can then focus on ways to increase your business’ bottom line with other fun projects and efficiencies instead of this boring stuff.

Data Loss Prevention:  In concert with lower administration costs and benefits seen there, your data is protected and will not be lost.  Redundancies built by Cloud storage providers ensure the integrity of the data and those assets are kept around for as long as you need them.  Having this stuff up in the cloud puts to bed those concerns of your laptop not waking up all of a sudden one day, or if your mobile device happens to fall in a shallow pool of water.  And you know exactly what I’m talking about.  Plus, you won’t lose that intellectual property that Susie was working on if she decides to buy a one-way trip a tropical destination one day and not tell you about it until she’s baking in the sun.

So get on board, and realize the full potential the Cloud has to offer for your business’ data storage and security solutions!

This is the first in a series of articles discussing auditing, compliance, and DLP best practices for Google Docs, Sites, Google+, and Google Drive.

With Google Drive out, organizations are now able to offer a legitimate, enterprise, Cloud-based file sharing alternative to what are considered to be “rogue” forms of collaborations (box.net, dropbox etc). Google Drive lets users drive more content more easily and securely into Google Docs.

For more hands-on details, see How to Create a Security Policy for Google Drive Content.