Google Announces Major Gmail Security Update for Millions of Users

Google today announced that it is making important security enhancements powered by Gemini AI available to organizations of all sizes. Millions of Gmail users who already benefit from AI-powered spam protection and malware filtering can now use the new Security Advisor tool to provide small and medium-sized businesses with the same protection that large businesses expect.

Security Advisor brings enterprise-grade security to Gmail

Rolling out to paid Google Workspace customers in the coming weeks, Security Advisor promises to bring enterprise-grade security to organizations of all sizes. It works by providing users with tailored intelligence to combat emerging threats, including actionable guidance for admins. Intelligence created by Security Advisor is delivered directly to IT admins’ inboxes.

From Gmail’s perspective, Security Advisor includes a security sandbox where all email attachments are scanned for malware using a virtual environment to safely analyze files. According to Google, the tool can “delay message delivery, allow customization of scan rules, and automatically move suspicious messages to the spam folder.” Gmail also enhances Safe Browsing, which provides additional protection by scanning incoming messages for malicious content before they are actually delivered. This is in addition to the massive language models that have already achieved remarkable results for all Gmail users, whether they are paid or free account holders. Google describes this as “one of the most dramatic security improvements in Gmail’s 20-year history.” The AI-powered models are trained on the worst kinds of emails and are trained to recognize patterns of abuse and rapidly deploy new protections against them. Google said this will allow it to “review 1000x more user-reporter spam every day, which is essentially like giving us 1,000 more cyber-defenders to keep users safe.”

Security Advisor protects more than just Gmail

Other improvements Security Advisor brings to Google include:

• Improved safe browsing in Chrome, protecting users from malware, phishing, and other online threats by providing early warnings of risky websites, extensions, and downloads.
• Data protection, preventing unwanted sharing of sensitive information by blocking or warning users and recommending protective settings to prevent external sharing.
• App access protection, giving administrators managed options for access to core Google Workspace apps like Gmail and Drive from unsecure mobile devices, missing security updates, and compromised devices.

The Security Advisor tool brings these capabilities directly to the Google Workspace Admin console, giving administrators customizable threat defense, account protection, and data protection.