Google has tested a new security feature in Gmail that displays a brand’s logo as an avatar to help you know that an email is genuine, the company announced. The functionality uses the Message Identification Brand Indicators (BIMI) standard, whose task force joined Google last year, and will be tested with a limited number of senders in the coming weeks.
According to Google, BIMI authentication can make recipients more confident about the source of an email, which scammers try and hide so that people click malicious links and / or hand over their personal data in a phishing attack. . Google will use BIMI in conjunction with another technology, DMARC, which tries to prevent scammers from misrepresenting an email’s “from” address to pretend it came from a legitimate source.
How Engadget He notes that the technology is similar to verified badges that social media uses for official celebrity and brand accounts. Google says it is using two Certification Authorities to validate who owns a particular logo: Entrust Datacard and DigiCert. Google hopes to make BIMI more widely available for brands to use in the coming months.
In addition to its BIMI trial version, Google also announced a number of other security measures for its video conferencing, chat, and business software:
- Google Meet is getting new controls to secure meetings. Uninvited guests will no longer be allowed to try “touching” and rejoining a meeting after being kicked out, and users will also not be able to request to join a meeting after being repeatedly denied. Hosts are also receiving new security controls to control who and how people can join meetings, and whether they can chat and present once they join.
- Links sent via chat will be flagged if Google thinks they are malicious, and it also plans to introduce reporting and blocking tools for chat rooms.
- G Suite administrators are getting new and redesigned controls on their suite of services. Tools are included to make it easier to block certain apps from accessing G Suite data, manage company Apple iOS devices, and new tools to prevent data loss.
For more information on Google’s new security features in G Suite, see Google’s full blog post.
