Security and control tools built specifically for Team Drives

What's new? This March, Google announced several features to help G Suite users protect themselves. One of those features is a new control that helps users protect super-sensitive content in Team Drive. These tools are already available to businesses using G Suite Business, Enterprise, Education, and Non-profit editions.

Admin can use this feature from May 30. End users must wait until June 4 – for Rapid Release businesses and June 18 – for Schedule Release businesses. Initially, this feature was only available to Google Drive on the web (drive.google.com). Here are the details:

User settings to protect documents in Team Drive

With this feature, users* will be able to change settings for any file in a Team Drive, to specify whether the data in it can:

• Shared with users who are not from the same business
• Shared with users who are not members of Team Drive
• Downloaded, copied and printed by commentors – who have only permission to comment, and viewers – who have only permission to view.

*To change these settings, the user must

1. Be a member of the enterprise's Team Drive (under the same domain) and
2. Have full control in Team Drive.

Admin-managed settings for new Team Drives in the enterprise

To protect sensitive business information, G Suite admins can set default settings for newly created Team Drives within the enterprise or in specific departments (Organization Units). However, these settings will not be left as default. The default settings include:

• Prevent users with full access from changing Team Drive settings
• Prevent users in the enterprise from creating new Team Drives
• Prevent users outside the enterprise from accessing documents in Team Drive
• Prevent users who are not Team Drive members from accessing the data in it
• Prevent commentors, viewers from downloading, copying or printing data in Team Drive

Note: Unless there are preset settings, people with full access can still change the settings in Team Drive after they are created.

For more information about choosing these settings in the admin console, you can visit Help Center.

Additional information for security settings

• The G Suite admin can change access permissions for any of the enterprise's Team Drives. For instructions, you can refer to Help Center.
• If Team Drive's settings are stricter than the settings of each document in it, Team Drive's settings will take effect. Example: Document A's settings allow access to members outside the enterprise, but Team Drive's settings prevent this, those people will lose access.
• If a document's settings are stricter than those of a Team Drive, the document's original settings are preserved. In addition, restrictions on the access rights of each document file will remain in place unless someone changes that setting.
• Settings and access restrictions in Team Drive only work with documents if they are still stored in that Team Drive. If these documents are moved to another location, the previous Team Drive related settings will no longer be effective. However, the settings before they are transferred to the Team Drive will remain the same.
• Refer to the Help Center for more information about How documents and protections in Team Drive work in each case.

To reduce the risk of information leakage, Google recommends that G Suite admins start setting up settings today. Note that, at first, the controls were only visible in Google Drive on the web (drive.google.com). For more information about Drive, you can go to Help Center and Learning Center.

Updated: Gimasys