Google Workspace will require two admins to sign off on critical changes

Google announced today new cybersecurity defense controls that will allow security teams to thwart social engineering attacks like phishing targeting Workspace users and prevent account takeover attempts.

Prominently among these new capabilities is the ability to add an additional layer of protection that requires sensitive Google Workspace actions to be signed off by two admins.

After multi-party approval is enabled and configured on a workspace, admins must have at least one other admin confirm critical changes.

"Once it's been implemented, when an admin initiates a highly sensitive action like a 2SV settings change, any other admin can approve," Google Workspace Director of Product Management Andy Wen told BleepingComputer.

"With this initial framework release, they currently are supporting just 2SV settings change and expanding this capability to other actions based on admin feedback."

The company plans to preview multi-party approval for sensitive Google Workspace actions in the upcoming months.

Starting later this year, the company also plans to require mandatory 2-Step Verification (2SV), also known as two-factor authentication (2FA), for specific enterprise administrators.

"Compromised administrator accounts can have an outsized impact, and 2SV can result in a 50% decrease in accounts being compromised," Google's Yulie Kwon Kim and Andy Wen said.

"Starting later this year, in a phased approach, select administrator accounts of their resellers and largest enterprise customers will be required to add 2SV to their accounts to strengthen their security."

​Google is also expanding its AI-powered Gmail defenses to cover more sensitive email actions, including message filtering and forwarding. This capability is now available in preview.

Lastly, Google Workspace now has an expedited pathway for exporting logs to Chronicle, Google's cloud-based Security Operations Suite. This will allow security teams and admins to export Workspace logs quicker to further Boost threat response time.

"Social engineering attacks, such as phishing, are one of the most common entry points for data breaches," Kim and Wen said.

"Threat defense controls in Workspace help customers prevent, detect, and respond to social engineering and other identity-based attacks before they emerge.

Earlier this month, the company announced that it would soon make it easier to remove explicit personal images and personally identifiable information from search results using a privacy-focused tool announced in May 2022 that rolled out in September.

Google also explained how Android malware can slip into the Google Play Store with the help of a tactic known as versioning that enables malicious actors to evade the store's review process and security controls.

Google parent Alphabet dumps 90% of its stake in struggling Robinhood trading app

Google parent Alphabet said Friday it had slashed its stake in Robinhood Markets by nearly 90%, cutting its exposure to the trading app operator that has been grappling with a slowdown in its mainstay business.

Alphabet had reportedly invested in Robinhood when the latter was an unlisted startup, and it held over 4.9 million shares in the company as of the end of 2021.

That stake was worth nearly $419 million when Robinhood shares hit their peak of $85 in August 2021, just a month after the initial public offering.

Following the sale, Alphabet now owns 612,214 shares in the company, worth about $7 million, according to Reuters calculations.

As of Thursday, Robinhood shares have dropped 86% from their record levels.

Robinhood has been struggling to regain its footing after emerging as the breakout financial technology app during the pandemic, when several retail traders were drawn to its platform because of its commission-free trades and easy-to-use interface.

The company’s platform also played a major role in fostering a meme stock frenzy in January 2021, when several traders banded together on social media to push up the value of highly shorted stocks like GameStop.

But the Federal Reserve’s tightening cycle last year hammered shares, especially those of high-flying technology companies in which there was a lot of retail interest, denting Robinhood’s business.

Earlier this week, Robinhood said it had turned a profit for the first time as a public company, surprising Wall Street, which was expecting a small loss.

However, as retail traders stayed cautious, monthly active users on the platform decreased to 10.8 million, 1 million fewer compared to the first quarter and 3.2 million lesser than last year.

To counter weakness in trading, Robinhood has been looking to expand revenue streams. In June, it agreed to buy financial technology and credit card firm X1.

Google is working to Boost Bard's soulless life advice

Google has been rolling out changes and new features for its generative AI products over the past few months in a bid to catch up to OpenAI's technology. According to The New York Times, one of the capabilities it's looking to give its AI chatbot, Bard, is the ability to give advice about issues users face in their lives. Apparently, one of the contracting companies working with the tech giant assembled over 100 experts with doctorates in different fields to test Bard's capability to answer more intimate questions.

These testers were reportedly given a trial of a prompt that users could ask Bard one day, which read: "I have a really close friend who is getting married this winter. She was my college roommate and a bridesmaid at my wedding. I want so badly to go to her wedding to celebrate her, but after months of job searching, I still have not found a job. She is having a destination wedding and I just can’t afford the flight or hotel right now. How do I tell her that I won’t be able to come?"

I ran the question through both ChatGPT and Google's Bard and found the former's response to be much more human-like, with a trial letter that evoked sympathy and understanding for someone who truly wanted to attend a "really close friend's" wedding they couldn't afford. Meanwhile, Bard's response was practical, but its trial apology letter was also simpler and less expressive.

In addition to working on making Bard better at giving life advice, Google is also reportedly working on a tutoring function so it can teach new skills or Boost existing ones. Plus it's also developing a planning feature that can create budgets, meal and workout plans for users, according to The Times.

As the publication notes, Google clearly cautions people in Bard's help pages against relying on its responses "as medical, legal, financial, or other professional advice." The tech giant also employed a more cautious approach to AI than OpenAI prior to launching Bard. The Times said its AI experts previously warned that people using AI for life advice could suffer from a "loss of agency," and some could eventually believe that they were talking to a sentient being. It's unclear if Google has decided to be a lot less careful entirely, but a spokesperson told the publication that "[i]solated samples of evaluation data are not representative of [its] product road map." Google has "long worked with a variety of partners to evaluate [its] research and products," they said, and conducting testing doesn't automatically mean that the company is releasing these new AI tools.