Benefits of Centralising User Identity using Google Workspace

Centralising your user identities across Google Marketing Platform with Google Workspace is low cost, secure, and efficient. If you’re using Google marketing tools and brand accounts, we encourage you to consider centralising user identity using Google Workspace. It’s a simple, secure, and efficient way to manage user access to your online properties.

What is the challenge businesses face with Google Marketing identities?

In today’s digital world, it’s more important than ever for businesses to have a strong online presence. Google Marketing Platform plays a crucial role in helping businesses achieve a strong online presence that is both visible and accessible. It does this across a number of tools such as AdWords, Google Business Profiles, Google Analytics, YouTube brand accounts and many more.

To access these tools, you will generally need to create or use a Google account. A Google Account is an account that gives you access to a variety of Google products and services, including Gmail, YouTube, Google Drive, and Google Maps. You can also use your Google Account to sign in to all of the Google marketing and brand products and services that you use, such as Google Marketing platform, YouTube, Adwords, Analytics and Google Maps.

Google Accounts come in 2 forms:

1. A free personal Google account such as an @gmail account which allows you to sign into your marketing and brand accounts as an individual. These accounts are managed as an individual account with a single login (username and password).
2. A Google Workspace account is a paid subscription that gives you access to a more comprehensive suite of productivity and collaboration tools, including Gmail, Calendar, Meet, Chat, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms and Sites as well as a central admin console with lots of security controls and in-depth reporting.

Doing nothing at all can cost organisations when users leave

Managing user identities for these Google Marketing and brand tools can be a challenge. If you have multiple employees who need access to these tools, you’ll need to create and manage separate Gmail accounts for each user or worse these users often use their personal Gmail accounts. This can be insecure as you do not manage the account in a central secure console with essential security tools and reporting. It can also cost your business if these users leave the organisation.

The Risks Of Employees Creating Unmanaged Google Accounts

In the process of doing their job, your employees can end up creating a consumer Google account based on their business identity. The intention is to work more productively and by using a corporate email, employees will often naturally assume that this would be fine to do. However, in the eyes of Google this is considered to be a personal account as it has been created by an individual rather than being issued to them by your business.

There are many risks associated with unmanaged users, for example, when it comes to data security. Data leaks and lack of control over unauthorised access to your data could lead to breaches in GDPR compliance. This puts your business at risk of being fined up to 2% of your company’s entire global yearly turnover.

Improve your security posture by centralising your Google user identities

A better solution is to centralise user identity using Google Workspace. Google Workspace is a suite of cloud-based productivity tools that includes Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, and more. Google Workspace also includes a Cloud identity which allows you to use Google to sign into Google products without using the full Google Workspace suite of products. Single sign-on (SSO) options are also available that allow you to use the same username and password to access all of your Google products and services so that your users can still sign in to your current systems if required.

By centralising user identity using Google Workspace, you can:

• Reduce the risk of security breaches by eliminating the need to create and manage multiple disparate user accounts.
• Streamline administrative tasks by centralising user management in one place.
• Manage access and security controls easily using security groups and organisational units.
• If you’re using Google marketing tools and brand accounts, we encourage you to consider centralising user identity using Google Workspace. It’s a simple, secure, and efficient way to manage user access to your online properties.

Benefits of centralising user identity using Google Workspace:

• Single Sign on controls: By using a single sign-on, you can reduce the number of passwords that users need to remember, which can help to improve security.
• Advanced security: By centralising user management, you can implement Google Workspace controls such as 2-Step Verification and Context Aware Access
• Low cost: Google cloud identity licences have both a free and a premium tier depending on what functionality you require.