There’s little debate about the security challenges faced by highly regulated industries like healthcare, banking, and energy. In the healthcare sector, 51% of enterprises have seen increased data breaches since 2019. 

Besides data security, regulated industries must also comply with stringent security and compliance regulations. As a unified security platform, Google Chrome Enterprise Premium (CEP) has emerged as a complete security solution – and a strategic tool for regulated companies to streamline security and management.

Here’s a look at how CEP delivers security best practices and business and technical value for companies in highly regulated industries.

Chrome Enterprise Premium – the future of endpoint security

Launched in April 2024, Google’s Chrome Enterprise Premium is designed to enhance your Chrome browser’s endpoint security. Gartner states, “Enterprise browsers will be the core platform for delivering workforce productivity and security software on managed and unmanaged devices for a seamless hybrid work experience.”

Enterprise browsers like Google Chrome are the new endpoints for security-related activities such as:

• User authentication and access
• Team collaboration and communication
• Access to applications and business systems
• Preventing data loss

With the emergence of remote working and a distributed workforce, endpoint security is becoming more challenging for companies. Designed for Chrome users, CEP provides a range of advanced security features including:

1. Data loss prevention (DLP) controls to monitor and restrict data flow within (and outside) an organization.
2. Threat protection with anti-phishing and anti-malware features – along with dynamic URL filtering and site categorization.
3. Context-sensitive access control for remote workers to access internal resources – along with zero-trust access to SaaS and web applications.
4. Security insights and reporting for event and device reporting, forensic capabilities, and integration with third-party security tools.

Here’s a deeper look at each of CEP’s advanced security features.

Data loss prevention (DLP)

In any regulated industry, data loss prevention is essential to minimize financial losses, legal risks, and impacts to brand reputation. With CEP’s DLP functionality, organizations have a robust secure framework that determines how sensitive data moves within – and outside – the organization. 

Among its security features, CEP DLP supports granular control for handling sensitive information. Besides file uploading and downloading controls, CEP enforces strict restrictions on printing sensitive information. CEP provides a single-point solution, thus simplifying management and reducing the number of systems required to provide similar functionality.

For highly sensitive data and files, CEP’s DLP features also restrict (or disallow) the copy-paste function, thus preventing any unauthorized data sharing and simplifying data control. Additionally, the watermarking feature works towards embedding identification marks into sensitive documents, thus deterring unauthorized sharing. This capability, along with CEP’s Evidence Locker tool, is also useful for identifying the source of data leaks – helpful in compliance-related audits.

With CEP’s URL filtering capability, companies can ensure that their employees do not visit high-risk websites during their working hours or from their work devices. This helps minimize security incidents and cybersecurity costs.

Threat protection

The threat ecosystem is constantly evolving – with new forms of sophisticated attacks. Companies in regulated industries cannot afford any security lapse leading to loss of confidential data. CEP’s threat protection provides a single unified platform for combating new and existing forms of external threats.

For instance, Google’s Safe Browsing technology identifies and blocks phishing attacks, thus preventing data breaches arising from human errors. Similarly, with CEP’s malware and ransomware protection, companies can constantly scan for real-time threats – and neutralize them before they infect devices or compromise critical systems.

In the unlikely event of a successful attack, CEP’s Evidence Locker functionality can perform “forensics” on the trail of events leading to the attack. This is useful for identifying the root cause and responding to a security incident.

Intelligent access control

In today’s world of remote and hybrid working, every organization needs “intelligent” access control for its distributed workforce to access resources from different locations and devices. CEP’s intelligent access control provides the right balance between flexibility and security. 

Among its capabilities, CEP’s context-sensitive access control authenticates users – based on the user’s device location, time of access, and security posture. CEP effectively reduces the need to deploy multiple access management solutions from various vendors, reducing both costs and complexity.

With its partner device signals function, CEP can integrate with third-party security solutions and mobile devices. This allows enterprises to leverage a “single panel” to monitor multiple device signals. Further, they can have more granular access control, simplify their security operations, and reduce their licensing costs.

Additionally, organizations with multi-cloud environments (like Google Cloud, AWS, and Azure) or on-premise servers can leverage CEP’s Identity Aware Proxy (IAP) feature to act as a gateway to applications hosted on these cloud platforms. This enables a unified approach to security – thus reducing the need for multiple tools and can help an organization lower costs.

Security insights and reporting

Companies in highly regulated industries need a more proactive approach to cybersecurity. A reactive approach is both risky and time-consuming leading to high costs. Google’s CEP offers this proactive approach by identifying and addressing high-risk vulnerabilities.

Further, in the event of any data loss, CEP’s reporting feature generates complete reports with details like:

• The type of data loss
• The source of the data leak
• The impact of the security incident

These security insights are critical for best practice monitoring, a swifter response to incidents, and to improve damage control in the future.

Business benefits of Google’s CEP

Beyond the functionality outlined above, Google’s CEP offers substantial business benefits, including the following:

1. Simplified cloud management
   For organizations with complex hybrid cloud environments, Google’s CEP tool offers a simpler centralized form of cloud management. It can streamline cloud operations, thus reducing cloud expenses and overhead and the burden on IT and security teams.
2. Security risk mitigation
   With its advanced security features, CEP can reduce the probability of a successful malware or ransomware attack and a data breach. This is crucial for preserving customer trust in industries like healthcare and banking.
3. Regulatory compliance
   The CEP tool enables organizations to meet industry-specific regulations such as HIPAA, PCI-DSS, and NERC CIP, thus helping them avoid costly fines and penalties for non-compliance. In particular, CEP’s watermarking feature enables regulatory compliance by providing proof of origin of any confidential document.
4. Workforce productivity
   As Gartner points out, CEP-enabled browsers are effective at improving workforce productivity. According to Forrester, 84% of remote work employers expect their workforce to get their work done from any location.
   CEP enables hybrid workers to securely connect to enterprise applications and data, thus making them more work-efficient. It provides them with the necessary cloud-based tools to boost their daily productivity.
5. Platform consolidation
   Google’s CEP platform effectively consolidates multiple security features on a single platform. This means companies can consolidate their licensing costs – and don’t need to invest in multiple, disparate tools.

Conclusion

As a future-centric security solution, Chrome Enterprise Premium ensures safer browsing at any location or device. With capabilities like intelligent access control and security insights, CEP enables companies in regulated industries like healthcare and energy to navigate the complex threat landscape.

As a trusted cloud partner for Google, Onix prioritizes the significance of proactive security for its customers – especially for CEP, where we are a preferred partner. We provide customized cloud security consulting services to proactively identify and remediate vulnerabilities and protect your data from external threats. Contact us to learn more about our cloud security capabilities.

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Reference links:

https://chromeenterprise.google/products/chrome-enterprise-premium

https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/identity-security/introducing-chrome-enterprise-premium