Until January 20th, customers (or, better, administrators) of Google Workspace Enterprise Plus, Education Plus, and Education Standard may require upgrading to the beta version of the service, with support for advanced encryption features.
Using client-side encryption in Gmail ensures that sensitive data in the body of the email and attachments are indecipherable for Google servers. Users retain control over encryption keys and the identity service to access those keys.
Google Workspace has long implemented the latest cryptographic standards to protect all data, in transit and at rest.
Client-side encryption helps strengthen data privacy, helping to meet a wide range of data sovereignty and compliance needs.
This technology is available now for Google Drive, Docs, Sheets and Presentations, Google Meet and Google Calendar (beta).
Intended for corporate customers
Administrators of eligible Workspaces (Enterprise Plus, Education Plus and Education) can request access to the new feature Standard), which however must carry out some preliminary configuration operations detailed on this page .Once switched to the beta version, the function will still be deactivated by default ; administrators will thus be able to enable it at the group level, organizational units or for the entire domain by taking advantage of the functions available in the Administration Console ( Security > data access and control > client-side encryption ).
Once enabled, users will be able to add client-side encryption to any message by clicking the lock icon and selecting Additional Encryption , after which they can continue composing the message as usual.
In the current beta phase, this feature will only be available for select Google Workspace subscriptions: Google Workspace Essentials, Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Education Fundamentals, Frontline, and non-profit customers remain excluded for now.