Google Drive will now let you spot anyone snooping around your company files

Securing your cloud storage systems is set to get a significant boost thanks to a new update from Google.

The company is updating its Google Drive platform to allow users to track external activity in their audit logs.

This should help admins spot any suspicious or unauthorized actions by external users, including attempts to copy, move or change data – keeping your important business information safe.

Google Drive audits

In a blog post announcing the news, Google noted that the change can help admins see new audit log events related to potential exfiltration that they could not see before, say for example if an external guest user makes a copy of your document in their organization.

The Google Drive audit log includes content created across a range of Google Workspace apps, including the likes of Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides, and also monitors content uploaded to Drive, such as PDFs and Microsoft Word files. 

Google says the feature will be switched on by default, and has begun rolling out to all Google Workplace customers with the Drive audit log feature now.

The news is the latest boost to Google Drive in recent weeks as the company launches a range of new tools and services.

This includes the launch of “search chips” in Drive, which lets users filter search results using various different parameters, including file type, labels and last modified date.

Google Drive will also make it possible to filter based on “To do” status, which narrows down the pool of results to include only files that have outstanding actions associated with them.

The platform will also soon begin to restrict access to files deemed to be in violation of the company’s policies. These files will be flagged to their owner and restricted automatically, which means they can no longer be shared with other people, and access will be withdrawn from everyone but the owner.

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