Google announces general availability of security groups for Workspace customers

The new security groups feature is rolling out to both Rapid Release and Scheduled Release domains and will be available to Google Workspace Essentials, Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Standard and Enterprise Plus customers, as well as G Suite Basic, Business, Education, Enterprise for Education and Nonprofits customers.

Google has announced the general availability of security groups for Workspace customers. These were previously available in beta.

"We're making security groups generally available. Security groups help you easily regulate, audit, and monitor groups used for permission and access control purposes by simply adding the security label," Google said on Tuesday.

Security groups help Workspace customers manage groups used for security and access control. They enable admins to:

• Apply a security label to any existing Google Group to distinguish it from non-security groups
• Provide strong guarantees that:
• External groups and non-security groups cannot be added as a member of a security group.
• Security labels, once assigned to a group, cannot be removed.

Admins can assign a group as a security group through the Cloud Identity Groups API, and then manage these groups via the Admin SDK Groups API, the Admin console, or the Cloud Identity Groups API.

The new security groups feature is rolling out to both Rapid Release and Scheduled Release domains and will be available to Google Workspace Essentials, Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Standard and Enterprise Plus customers, as well as G Suite Basic, Business, Education, Enterprise for Education and Nonprofits customers.

Recently, Google announced several other features including membership visibility and membership hierarchy APIs and group membership expiration that help Workspace customers better manage groups in their organization and improve the overall security posture.