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Does CloudAlly Replace Google Vault?

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Does CloudAlly Replace Google Vault?

You use Google Vault alongside your G Suite email, hangout chats, groups, and Drive. So, your data is protected from accidental or malicious loss, right? No.

Google Vault is not a backup solution; it’s an eDiscovery and archiving solution with hold, search, and export features in case of litigation. And it isn’t fool proof.

Just recently, Google Vault was caught up in a security leak by where a large trove of private documents was released to the public. Plus, there are significant limitations to what Google Vault can do in terms of archiving data, protecting against data loss, and recovering information.

So, what can Google Vault do?

What Is Google Vault?

Google Vault is a web-based application that can be added to G Suite Enterprise, Business, and Education editions for $5/user per month. You can use Vault to:

  • Archive: Determine how long you want to retain data before it is removed from a user account and deleted from the Google system.
  • Hold: Place holds on users to reserve their data indefinitely for legal or other obligatory reasons.
  • Search: Search data by user account, organizational unit, date, or keyword.
  • Export: Export data for additional review.
  • Audit: Create audit reports to see the actions of your Vault users.

Google Vault offers email retention, search, and export when requested by a Google Apps administrator. To use its features, you have to be an administrator.

The issue is that Google Vault requires a lot of work on the part of your IT Google administrator. They have to specify exactly which emails they want to preserve and for how long. Google Vault will only preserve items that match the indicated criteria and only for the time required. This means that your IT department will need to know, at the very beginning, what should be kept for legal or compliance purposes.

Once items are saved, you can easily perform a Google Vault search or export to find the data you need. Just take a look at this short three-minute video about how to search and export in the Vault.

Google Vault isn’t a backup and recovery solution. It’s an eDiscovery and archiving system that should only be used when specific information is required for litigation, not as a data protection service.

SaaS Cloud Backup

An SaaS cloud backup and restore solution such as CloudAlly is a natural progression from Google Vault. It fully and automatically creates backups of your Gmail, Drive, Classic Sites, Calendar, Contacts, Tasks, and Chats every day without your IT administrator being required to do anything. Unlike Vault, CloudAlly saves everything for as long as you need it. You have unlimited storage retention, so that at any point in time you can search and export the data you need. In addition, you can also restore data to a person’s account, which is something Google Vault cannot do.

But do you really need CloudAlly when the G Suite already saves your data?  Yes.

One of Google’s best features is its ability to auto-save Google Docs and other data without requiring you to click “File>Save.” The problem is that this auto-save feature doesn’t protect against user-deletion. Once a user empties a trashcan, the data is deleted from the Google Site. And while some data is recoverable, there’s a time limit of 25 to 30 days.

As for email, as discussed earlier, Google Vault only saves emails that match the retention rule that your IT administrator sets up. If an email doesn’t fit the specified criteria, it’s lost.

Using Both Google Vault and CloudAlly

Using CloudAlly alongside Google Vault means that you have a simple way to recover your data without any extra effort on your part as well as a way to archive and discover information required for litigation.

CloudAlly preserves all your data from email to contacts for recovery and search. No matter if a person deletes or even overwrites data, CloudAlly offers you a simple way to recover data and protect against loss.

Google Vault’s export and search preserves your email and Drive for legal compliance purposes. It helps you discover data that you may need, but it doesn’t protect you from data loss.

In short, you need both CloudAlly and Google Vault to be completely protected.  Check out our G Suite backup solution.

HIPAA IT compliance – G Suite

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HIPAA IT Compliance – G Suite

HIPAA IT Compliance - G SuiteFor many companies, moving to the cloud is supposed to solve many of the headaches they have with compliance and regulatory agencies. Cloud hosting offers redundancy and protection, an area where some businesses lack. However, when it comes to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, best known as HIPAA, many cloud services are lacking, and are not ready for HIPAA IT compliance. Google G Suite however, has worked extremely hard to be one of the few that is not one of those providers.

Making G Suite HIPAA compliant is easy.

Google published a guide to making their G Suite service HIPAA compliant. The lengthy explanation includes share settings for Drive and calendars. They also recommend users have strong passwords with a combination of upper and lower-case letters, numbers, and special symbols. Google suggests in addition to strong passwords; all users turn on two-step sign in authentication.

To make securing G Suite accounts less confusing, here are five primary ways to ensure G Suite is HIPAA compliant.

Sign an Agreement with Google

Google strives to make their service as secure as possible. However, they cannot guarantee HIPAA compliance if there is no agreement in place dictating the account need these protections.

Google’s Business Associate Agreement only covers some of the apps G Suite employs. Apps permitted by the Personal Health Information (PHI) agreements include:

  • Gmail
  • Calendar
  • Google Hangouts (chat messaging feature only)
  • Hangouts Meet
  • Drive (including Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Forms)
  • Keep
  • Google Cloud Search
  • Sites
  • Vault

At this time, all business associate agreements concerning PHI’s do not cover Google Groups, Contacts, or Google+.

Monitor Access

HIPAA compliance is not something you can turn on and forget about it. The administrator console contains reports and logs allowing you to tell at a glance where potential security risks may be. Reports show you how frequently employees access and share data. These reports also measure user collaboration on a given file, who signs in, and even analyze administrative activity.

To help lower the risk of lost information due to unauthorized activity, Google allows for alert notifications. Whenever Google detects activity such as a suspended user, new user, or suspicious login, administrators can view the attempt. You can also set notifications for making a suspended user active and adding a new user.

Installing third-party software designed to scan for shared files with sensitive information is another way to ensure all data remains secure.

Set Restricted Settings

With a signed business associate agreement, Google helps you protect HIPAA confidential information in their core applications. You can do more by setting restrictive settings when creating user accounts. In Google Drive, turn off automatic link sharing by choosing the option Specific People, which only allows invited individuals to view the document. You can then give control of link exchange to the Drive user or can retain this control with administrators only.

Gmail allows individuals to restrict shared Drive files further. The sender can choose to limit the recipient’s ability to view only rather than edit or comment on the document. Senders can also restrict access to those with Gmail accounts.

Consider Separating Users within the Domain

Many companies using G Suite segregate their employees who work with HIPAA sensitive documents from those who do not. Creating different groups allows administrators to manage which groups have access to specific Google services.

Smaller companies may be able to get away with creating two groups, one which handles HIPAA sensitive documents and one that does not. Administration can limit those with sensitive documents, blocking them from services such as Google+ and YouTube. The other group has permissions for all G Suite services.

Companies can choose to create as many groups as they want, segregating their employees’ accounts further if they choose. While an entire HR department may have access to HIPAA sensitive files, only a small few works with those documents. You may have the HR department as one group. You can create another group with just those employees handling sensitive information. You can choose to do the same with each department.

Backup Sensitive Information

Data loss is no laughing matter. When it comes to confidential information, it is even more important. You should have an HIPAA compliant backup service assisting in the protection of all your PHI files.

CloudAlly is an HIPAA compliant backup service. After becoming ISO 27001 certified, it allowed us to begin offering backup for patient sensitive documents and information. We comply with all federal guidelines concerning how to handle this information including every aspect of data handling when backing up, accessing authorization, and encryption. Companies that require a business associate agreement, we can provide one upon request.

At CloudAlly, we backup all your files automatically, giving you peace of mind that important HIPAA controlled documents are never lost or corrupted.

Try it free for 15 days, no credit card required for signup.

 

 

7 Things You Might Not Know You Can Do in Google Apps for Work

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Google Apps for Work Backup

How productive has your business been since you started using Google Apps for Work? Or setup a Google Apps for work backup? Backup google apps for business – its the right business decision.

Although it takes time to see the difference, some benefits related to improved collaboration, knowledge sharing via mobile devices and so on is seen almost instantly. A few notable reasons for which your company uses Google Apps for Work would perhaps be the anytime and anywhere access to file storage, documents, online calendar, business emails and so on.

Before opting for Google Apps Backup for Work and its suite of products, it is likely that your company considered alternate options, such as Microsoft Office 365. But, the low pricing, more flexibility with mobile devices and better familiarity may have pushed the decision in favor of Google Apps.

The general notion is that Office 365 offers many such features that go unused and so many companies may not wish to spend more on it. However, even Google Apps for Work has several features that not many of us are aware of. The tendency is to leverage the basic features offered by its products and services, such as Gmail, Google Docs, Google Slides, Google Calendar, Google Drive, Hangouts, Google Sites, Google+, Google Apps, Vault, Google Forms and Google Sheets.

In this article, we look at some key benefits or features of Google Apps for Work that you may not yet be using.

The objective is to help you make the maximum use of the available productivity tools at hand and increase your business efficiency as well as profitability in different ways.

List of Possibly Unknown Features of Google Apps for Work

1. Finding an Appropriate Time for a Group Meeting with Google Calendar

You may be using Google Calendar to maintain your own schedule of meetings and to invite otheremployees to a group meeting or event. When you are scheduling a group meeting and before you send the invite, you sometimes have to spend a considerable amount of time determining a free time slot when the most people are available.

You can avoid comparing the time schedules of others personally and simply make Google Calendar do this for you with its “Find a Time” feature. While creating your event schedule, you can add all the event-related details for guests, rooms, resources, purpose, and so on. Later, you can use the “Find a Time” tab which can be found on the “Event details” page. This tab displays the schedules of up to 10 people whom you are planning to invite side by side.

It thus recommends a time that is most suitable for all the guests and resources. So, without asking your guests for their availability, you can get an idea about their free time slots and send meeting invites accordingly that are more likely to be accepted.

2. Making Navigation Easier in Google Docs

What do you do when you need to go to a particular section of your long Google Doc? You would likely use “Ctrl + F” to search for the relevant keywords that you assume will be discussed in that section. However, in a very long document, this search option can sometimes become very tedious, especially if the keywords are used across multiple sections.

In such a scenario, you simply have to go through them one by one till you find your preferred section. You can avoid such a long process of arriving at your desired section or paragraph by simply adding more structure to your Google Doc using a table of contents.

It is extremely easy to create the table of contents: You can simply generate links that take you directly to a particular section when clicked. How efficient is that!

3. Maintaining Better Business Travel Plans

You will be glad to learn that information about important events or business travel plans can now easily be transferred from your Gmail to your Google Calendar.

You will get the notification along with an explanation of the relevant settings in your Google Calendar when the first mail related to an event or travel plans arrives in your Gmail inbox.

So, the next time you receive an email about some business travel plans or an event, the related travel or event information automatically gets added to your calendar. Any changes to the plan are also automatically updated in Google Calendar.

As the owner, only you can view these details, modify the visibility settings and disable this feature.

4. Obtaining Real-Time Insights from Form Results

You may often have spent additional time to get more insights from the results of your Google Form or you may be an expert at using the requisite formulas to get more real-time analytics from the form responses with charts or similar stuff.

But, with the “Form Result summaries” feature, the form itself generates a breakdown of your form results into various charts and graphs. All you need to do is click on “Form”, followed by a click on “Show summary of responses” from your Google sheet.

You will then be directed to detailed pie charts and graphs for your form responses. A key benefit is that these analytics get updated in real-time.

So, if any changes are made to the form responses, you will immediately get updated analytics.

5. Muting Group Email Threads with Gmail

Imagine this situation: You have been part of a very important group email discussion where all your project team members discussed some key points to note before your annual meeting.

But, when there are too many people involved, the official group email discussion often turns into casual discussions once the objective is met. So, you may see people still replying in the same group email while discussing dinner plans or long drive plans after the annual meeting.

Now, this can get annoying as you keep getting regular notifications about this email thread, even when someone sends an irrelevant reply. You need not worry about getting disturbed at work with such group email thread conversations. With Gmail, you can simply mute these email threads and continue doing your work.

6. Maintaining Consistency of Cell Formats in Google Sheets

You would by now be used to working in Google Sheets for maintaining information related to projects, doing quality reports or even for planning some team events at your office. But, you would agree, sometimes while you are copying and pasting information from one cell to another, you have to do separate formatting as consistency is not

Now, you can ensure that the fonts, colors and related formatting are maintained in the same format for the information that you have copied into a destination cell. This can be achieved by making use of the paint brush tool for copying and pasting data available in Sheets.

7. Including Forms in the Body of Emails for Quick Responses

At work, it would be a common occurrence for you to receive mails with links to forms where the business wants you to share feedback on particular initiatives. Similarly, a link to a form may be sent to all project members or employees of a company while deciding the menu options for a celebration party.

It is further likely that when you receive such emails, you might mark them important to read and submit your response later. This is probably because you do not know how long the form is and think that once you are free from work, you will open the form link and fill it in as needed.

With Google Forms, it is now possible to include the form right in the body of the email which means that people can quickly fill it in and send their responses.

This increases the likelihood of getting quick responses to your form, as everyone is able to see the number of fields to be filled and can thus spare one to two minutes to do what is needed. The process to include forms in your email is very easy.

Once the form is created, you can click on the “Send form” option at the top right-hand side corner. You can then simply add the email addresses and tick the box option “Include form in email”. That is it!

The recipients of your mail will be able to submit their answers as soon as they open the mail. The form responses will be received in real-time, which allow you to analyze them almost instantly.

We hope that the above list of features adds to the benefits that you are already gaining from your current use of Google Apps for Work. The more you explore the more chances you will have to get the maximum productivity for your business from these tools. After all, efficient and maximum use of the available resources is the best way to keep your business profitable.