By Frank J. Ohlhorst

The last thing any MSP wants to hear from a customer is the belief that the cloud is a dangerous place. After all, how can an MSP sell cloud services if the perception is that the cloud has become akin to some sort of digital Wild West, where outlaws roam free and robberies are a daily occurence?

Google is looking to become the new sheriff in town, or at least some type of marshal, where cybercriminals will flee the confines of the Google Cloud in search of easier pickings.

The company recently fired a warning shot into the air with some major security revamps to its cloud products portfolio, including updates to the Google Cloud Platform (GCP), G Suite, Chrome Enterprise and other offerings. At the CEO Security Forum in New York, the company made 20 announcements about security enhancements, aiming to put some security concerns to rest. Some of the most notable enhancements include:

The above enhancements will be welcomed by MSPs looking to further their involvement with services provided by Google Cloud. What’s more, the new security offerings and options bring cloud security into better focus and should help to assuage customers’ security concerns.

While information security and the cloud still have a ways to travel, Google is making steps in the right direction, especially as businesses become more concerned over privacy issues and new requirements such as GDPR. Transparency goes a long way toward reassuring customers that they have control over their data and that the data is fully auditable, which should also fit well into compliance reporting requirements.

Savvy MSPs should be able to spin Google’s new security offerings into enhanced services and reporting capabilities, while also helping to better protect customer clouds.