Google Cloud Pitches Security Tools to Aid Government Business

Nico Grant (Bloomberg) -- Google Cloud unveiled three security products for governments to expand its public-sector business and shore up systems that are increasingly vulnerable to cyberattacks.

Google’s new software offerings are based on a zero-trust framework and will help governments be in compliance with U.S. President Joe Biden’s executive order on improving cybersecurity, the Alphabet Inc. unit said Tuesday in a blog post. The company will pitch its Zero Trust Assessment and Planning, Secure Application Access Anywhere and Active Cyber Threat Detection offerings at a security summit on Tuesday.

Recent months have brought a wave of high-profile ransomware and other cyberattacks to U.S. businesses, and government agencies have also been targeted in recent years. The situation prompted Biden’s executive order on cybersecurity in May, when he compelled government contractors to build zero-trust security into all software, urged IT providers to report attacks to the government and sought to standardize the public-sector response. Google Cloud, the world’s No. 3 cloud provider, is trying to use Biden’s security push to expand the number and size of its government contracts in an effort to catch up to Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp. Zero trust is the name for computer security that requires all users to be authenticated, authorized and continually validated to work on a network.

“From Covid-19 to recent ransomware attacks, the events of the past year have demonstrated that government agencies need to rethink security frameworks of the past,” said Mike Daniels, Google Cloud’s global public sector vice president. “We are prepared to share our experience operating in a Zero Trust model, along with Google’s technologies that are secure by design, to help the U.S. government prevent, detect, assess and remediate cyber incidents.”

Google’s Zero Trust Assessment and Planning will advise the government on the policies, technologies and changes they’d need to adopt a zero-trust framework. The Secure Application Access Anywhere offering, delivered with partner Palo Alto Networks Inc., lets government users safely access business apps no matter where they are. Finally, the Active Cyber Threat Detection solution will let agencies better analyze their data to detect an attack or intrusion earlier.