Encrypted file sharing, collaboration and search in Google Workspace

GarbleCloud addresses the growing concerns of Federal organizations around information security & privacy when adopting public-cloud applications. Entrusting the commercial clouds with unfettered access to all their data is not an option. Moreover, not all CSPs are creating a separate Gov-Cloud to keep Federal or DoD data separate from the rest. In such situations, capabilities like those enabled by GarbleCloud become critical by giving Federal/DoD and other large public sector organizations the ability to leverage the Public Cloud's immense power and innovation without having to relinquish control over its data to these platforms and service providers.

Today, the GarbleCloud service enables comprehensive function-preserving data encryption to ensure complete privacy of user-generated content in the Google Workspace Applications like Google Drive, Calendar, Meet and Gmail. It encrypts files, documents, and various other types of data like Calendar events, emails, video recordings etc. in a way that prevents even Google from looking into the protected user-data. This not only enhances the privacy of sensitive data but adds a very strong layer of additional security against data breaches and exfiltration in all kinds of internal and external attack scenarios such as Ransomware attacks. The best part is that GarbleCloud’s patented technology preserves functionalities like search, sharing and collaboration even on this encrypted data, hence not compromising user productivity in any way. We developed these capabilities in close collaboration with the Google Workspace Security team to ensure a native user experience for Workspace customers.

GarbleCloud also supports such function-preserving file encryption capabilities for other popular file-and-document sharing platforms like Dropbox (available now) and Slack, Box, OneDrive/SharePoint (available soon).

Customer-controlled encryption is the only guaranteed way to minimize the risk of data breach and unwanted exposure via sharing & collaboration platforms, as well as meet the stringent requirements of data confidentiality per Zero-Trust Security principles and Privacy regulations like HIPAA, GDPR, etc.

We are also cognizant of the future directions that the DoD (and the Federal sector in general) are working towards in the data security domain -- post-quantum (quantum resistant) cryptography. The GarbleCloud key management system is designed to be crypto-agile. We will support gradual transition to new public-key encryption and signature algorithms that are Quantum Safe as they get standardized by NIST.