Security News

Threat actors are exploiting Google Docs by hosting their attacks within the web-based document service in a new phishing campaign that delivers malicious links aimed at stealing victims' credentials. The attack begins with an email that includes a message that could be relevant to business users who commonly use Google Docs within their corporate environment.

Google has finally enabled end-to-end encryption for the Messages app in Android but the privacy-enhancing tool remains somewhat limited. Google announced end-to-end encryption is now available in Android, but only for one-on-one conversations between users of the Messages app.

Google this week announced that it has released open source tools and libraries that can be used by developers to implement fully homomorphic encryption. FHE enables the processing of encrypted data without providing access to the actual data.

Google this week announced the introduction of client-side encryption in Google Workspace, which is meant to provide users with control over the encryption keys used to keep their data safe. Organizations that store sensitive or regulated data will benefit the most from the new feature, which helps them meet compliance requirements for CJIS, EAR, IRS 1075, ITAR, and TISAX. Client-side encryption works with key access service partners Flowcrypt, Futurex, Thales, and Virtru, which will be responsible for holding the key to decode Google Workspace data.

Google Workspace has been updated with client-side encryption and new Google Drive phishing and malware content protection. Enabling Client-side encryption for a document will only allow you and your partner who holds the key to access the contents of the encrypted Google Workspace files.

Thales announced that its CipherTrust Manager and SafeNet Trusted Access have been integrated with Google Workspace Client-side encryption, a new privacy and confidentiality offering for Google Workspace users. Providing enhanced key management capabilities and identity protection, customers can benefit from improved regulatory compliance and data ownership by allowing them to maintain ownership of keys used to encrypt Google Workspace documents.

Google is offering U.K. regulators a role overseeing its phasing out of ad-tracking technology from its Chrome browser, in a package of commitments the tech giant is proposing to apply globally to head off a competition investigation. The U.K. competition watchdog has been investigating Google's proposals to remove so-called third-party cookies over concerns they would undermine digital ad competition and entrench the company's market power.

Google on Monday announced that it's rolling out client-side encryption to Google Workspace, thereby giving its enterprise customers direct control of encryption keys and the identity service they choose to access those keys. The development coincides with the Google Workspace and Google Chat's broader availability to all users with a Google account.

Essentially, FLoC allows marketers to guess users' interests without having to uniquely identify them, thereby eliminating the privacy implications associated with tailored advertising, which currently relies on techniques such as tracking cookies and device fingerprinting that expose users' browsing history across sites to advertisers or ad platforms. FLoC sidesteps the cookie with a new "Cohort" identifier wherein users are bucketed into clusters based on similar browsing behaviors.

IonQ announced the full integration of its quantum computing platform with Cirq, an open-source quantum computing framework from Google. "From its origins, the vision for Cirq was to expand access to quantum computing to even broader audiences," said Dave Bacon, VP of Software at IonQ. "As a developer myself, I know that a smoother, simpler implementation is a better implementation, one that will be more useful in the real world. Volkswagen has shown that developing in Cirq on IonQ has real benefits for real problems faced by development teams."