Google Workspace | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

The Need For Unified Security Google Workspace is where teams collaborate, share ideas, and get work done. But while it makes work easier, it also creates new security challenges. Cybercriminals are constantly evolving, finding ways to exploit misconfigurations, steal sensitive data, and hijack user accounts. Many organizations try to secure their environment by piecing together different security tools, hoping that multiple layers of protection will keep them safe.  But in reality, this patchwork approach often creates blind spots, making it harder—not easier—to defend against threats. To truly secure Google Workspace, businesses need a unified security strategy that offers complete protection without unnecessary complexity. The problem with most security solutions is that they only solve part of the puzzle. Point solutions, like tools that block malware or phishing attacks, might work well for a specific type of threat but fail to recognize suspicious user behavior, unauthori...

For decades, Microsoft Exchange has been the backbone of business communications, powering emailing, scheduling and collaboration for organizations worldwide. Whether deployed on-premises or in hybrid environments, companies of all sizes rely on Exchange for seamless internal and external communication, often integrating it deeply with their workflows, compliance policies and security frameworks. However, Microsoft has officially announced that support for Exchange Server 2016 and Exchange Server 2019 will end on October 14, 2025. While this may seem like a distant concern, businesses and IT teams must start preparing now. The end of support means that Microsoft will no longer provide security patches, bug fixes or technical support, leaving organizations running on these versions exposed to security vulnerabilities, compliance risks and potential operational disruptions. So, what should businesses do now? In this article, we'll explore the impact of Microsoft's decision, the risks...

In cybersecurity, confidence is a double-edged sword. Organizations often operate under a false sense of security , believing that patched vulnerabilities, up-to-date tools, polished dashboards, and glowing risk scores guarantee safety. The reality is a bit of a different story. In the real world, checking the right boxes doesn't equal being secure. As Sun Tzu warned, "Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat." Two and a half millennia later, the concept still holds: your organization's cybersecurity defenses must be strategically validated under real-world conditions to ensure your business's very survival. Today, more than ever, you need Adversarial Exposure Validation (AEV) , the essential strategy that's still missing from most security frameworks. The Danger of False Confidence Conventional wisdom suggests that if you've patched known bugs, deployed a stack of well-regarded security tools, and passed the nec...

The modern workplace has undergone a seismic transformation over recent years, with hybrid work becoming the norm and businesses rapidly adopting cloud-based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications to facilitate it. SaaS applications like Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace have now become the backbone of business operations, enabling seamless collaboration and productivity. However, this dependence on SaaS solutions has also attracted a surge in cyberthreats, exposing critical business data to risks like ransomware and phishing attacks.  Amid these challenges, the 2025 State of SaaS Backup and Recovery Report offers a timely analysis of the SaaS data protection landscape. By surveying over 3,700 IT professionals from diverse industries and company sizes, this report highlights trends, challenges and solutions shaping the future of SaaS data resilience. For organizations seeking clarity in navigating these turbulent waters, the findings provide invaluable guidance. Key revelat...

Google Workspace has quickly become the productivity backbone for businesses worldwide, offering an all-in-one suite with email, cloud storage and collaboration tools. This single-platform approach makes it easy for teams to connect and work efficiently, no matter where they are, enabling seamless digital transformation that's both scalable and adaptable. As companies shift from traditional, on-premises setups focused on device security, to more user-centered, hybrid models, Google Workspace is perfectly positioned to support this evolution. Now, the user account itself is the central hub, allowing access from any device or location — a game changer in today's remote and distributed work environments. However, with all this connectivity and flexibility comes a challenge. Google Workspace connects to countless apps and touches every user in the organization, making it an appealing target for cybercriminals. The platform's internet accessibility opens up additional entry points, raisi...

When you connect your organization's Google Drive account to ChatGPT, you grant ChatGPT extensive permissions for not only your personal files, but resources across your entire shared drive. As you might imagine, this introduces an array of cybersecurity challenges. This post outlines how to see ChatGPT activity natively in the Google Workspace admin console, and how Nudge Security can provide full visibility into all genAI integrations. Since launching ChatGPT in 2022, OpenAI has defied expectations with a steady stream of product announcements and enhancements. One such announcement came on May 16, 2024, and for most consumers, it probably felt innocuous. Titled  "Improvements to data analysis in ChatGPT," the post outlines how users can add files directly from Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive. It's worth mentioning that other genAI tools like Google AI Studio and Claude Enterprise have also added similar capabilities recently. Pretty great, right? Maybe.‍ When you co...

Google's  Gemini  large language model (LLM) is susceptible to security threats that could cause it to divulge system prompts, generate harmful content, and carry out indirect injection attacks. The findings come from HiddenLayer, which said the issues impact consumers using Gemini Advanced with Google Workspace as well as companies using the LLM API. The first vulnerability involves getting around security guardrails to leak the system prompts (or a system message), which are designed to set conversation-wide instructions to the LLM to help it generate more useful responses, by asking the model to output its "foundational instructions" in a markdown block. "A system message can be used to inform the LLM about the context," Microsoft  notes  in its documentation about LLM prompt engineering. "The context may be the type of conversation it is engaging in, or the function it is supposed to perform. It helps the LLM generate more appropriate responses....

Cybersecurity researchers have detailed a "severe design flaw" in Google Workspace's domain-wide delegation ( DWD ) feature that could be exploited by threat actors to facilitate privilege escalation and obtain unauthorized access to Workspace APIs without super admin privileges. "Such exploitation could result in theft of emails from Gmail, data exfiltration from Google Drive, or other unauthorized actions within Google Workspace APIs on all of the identities in the target domain," cybersecurity firm Hunters  said  in a technical report shared with The Hacker News. The design weakness – which remains active to this date – has been codenamed  DeleFriend  for its ability to manipulate existing delegations in the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and Google Workspace without possessing super admin privileges. When reached for comment, Google disputed the characterization of the issue as a design flaw. "This report does not identify an underlying security issue in o...

A set of novel attack methods has been demonstrated against Google Workspace and the Google Cloud Platform that could be potentially leveraged by threat actors to conduct ransomware, data exfiltration, and password recovery attacks. "Starting from a single compromised machine, threat actors could progress in several ways: they could move to other cloned machines with  GCPW  installed, gain access to the cloud platform with custom permissions, or decrypt locally stored passwords to continue their attack beyond the Google ecosystem," Martin Zugec, technical solutions director at Bitdefender,  said  in a new report. A prerequisite for these attacks is that the bad actor has already gained access to a local machine through other means, prompting Google to mark the bug as  not eligible for fixing  "since it's outside of our threat model and the behavior is in line with Chrome's practices of storing local data." However, the Romanian cybersecurity firm has w...

Any app that can improve business operations is quickly added to the SaaS stack. However, employees don't realize that this SaaS-to-SaaS connectivity, which typically takes place outside the view of the security team, significantly increases risk. Whether employees connect through Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Slack, Salesforce, or any other app, security teams have no way to quantify their exposure. These 'secondary' apps can be requesting an intrusive set of permissions or be malicious. Every click authorizing access may grant the right to edit or delete company files, send emails on behalf of the user, create new files, or otherwise handle data in a way that poses a profound threat to the organization's security. To handle the SaaS Security challenges, security teams need to address the entire SaaS ecosystem.  Today's SaaS security evolution has expanded SaaS security beyond simply preventing access. It extends far beyond securing the app. Today's orga...

Google on Monday announced that it's rolling out client-side encryption to Google Workspace (formerly G Suite), thereby giving its enterprise customers direct control of encryption keys and the identity service they choose to access those keys. "With client-side encryption, customer data is indecipherable to Google, while users can continue to take advantage of Google's native web-based collaboration, access content on mobile devices, and share encrypted files externally," the search giant  said .  "When combined with our other encryption capabilities, customers can add new levels of data protection for their Google Workspace data." The development coincides with the Google Workspace and Google Chat's  broader availability to all users  with a Google account. Workspace is the company's enterprise offering consisting of Gmail, Chat, Calendar, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Meet, and other tools. Businesses using Google Workspace have the choice o...