Google’s Advanced Protection Program safeguards the personal Google Accounts of anyone at risk of targeted attacks – such as journalists, activists, business leaders and political campaign teams.

Google say that it’s not needed for everyone, but if you feel you are a target then maybe this is a necessary safeguard for you.

Basic security for a Google account is just a password. Two factor authentication is the next step and it means you have to identify yourself using two items such as a password and a PIN sent to you by text message.

The third stage of security is the use of a physical security key.

Q. What is phishing?

Phishing is a common technique used by fraudsters to trick you into giving away your login details for example. The phishing attack may be via email, text message phone call, website or in an APP.

Q. How does Advanced Protection defend against phishing?

Even if you do fall for a phishing attack that discloses your username and password, an unauthorised user won’t be able to access your account without one of your physical Security Keys.

To enrol, you’ll need to purchase two Security Keys — one wireless-enabled key to act as your main key, and one backup key. After you enrol, other authentication factors you might be used to, like codes sent via SMS or the Google Authenticator app, will no longer work.

Safeguard your data by limiting access to it

When you sign up for new apps or services, you are sometimes asked to give access to data in your Google Account. Usually this doesn’t pose a risk, but sophisticated attackers could compromise or impersonate an app or service to gain access to your personal data. To help protect you, Advanced Protection allows only Google apps and select third-party apps to access your emails and Drive files.

As a trade-off for this tightened security, the functionality of some of your apps may be affected. Most third-party apps that require access to your Gmail or Drive data, such as travel tracking apps, will no longer have permission. And you will only be able to use Chrome and Firefox to access your signed-in Google services like Gmail or Photos.

Apple’s Mail, Calendar, and Contacts apps will continue to be able to access your Google data as normal.

A common way that hackers try to access your account is by impersonating you and pretending they have been locked out of your account. To give you the strongest protection against this type of fraudulent account access, Advanced Protection adds extra steps to verify your identity during the account recovery process.

Go to https://landing.google.com/advancedprotection/ if you want to know more about Google Advanced Security.

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