Security Health

Security Health centralizes all your security-related settings in the Google Admin console, making it easy to manage and monitor your domain’s security posture. This feature provides a real-time view of your current security configuration. It offers recommendations on improving it, with links to detailed knowledge-based articles on adjusting each setting.

In this article, you’ll learn how to

Navigate to Security Health

Understand your organization's most critical security settings

Implement recommendations that align with your specific needs

Overview of Security Health

The Security Health page in the Admin console gives administrators a single location to review key security settings across multiple areas such as Gmail, Drive, and device management. This comprehensive dashboard highlights settings that may need attention and provides actionable insights to help you enhance your domain's security. You can also access educational resources tailored to explain how to adjust these settings based on your organization's requirements.

While Security Health offers Google's recommended security settings, it's essential to assess these recommendations within the context of your environment—especially for educational institutions. Google Workspace for Education includes unique security considerations, and not all business-focused recommendations will fit educational best practices. Before making any changes, review your institution's security policies and apply settings that best align with your users' needs.

• From the Admin console: Navigate to Security > Security center > Security health. The settings list includes Setting name, Status, and Status/Recommendation columns. From this page, you'll see an overview of your domain’s security status and recommendations for any necessary adjustments.

The Status column shows how many OUs a setting is enabled or disabled and the status of these settings. A green checkbox will appear to indicate whether your settings are considered secure. Click the gray icons for more details and link to the knowledge base.

Key Areas of Security Monitoring

Security Health allows you to monitor and adjust settings in the following areas:

• Gmail settings: Review email security features such as SPF, DKIM, and DMARC to protect your email communications against phishing and spoofing.
• Drive settings: Ensure data loss prevention (DLP) policies and sharing permissions align with your organization's privacy policies.
• Device management settings: Manage policies for devices accessing your organization's data, including mobile devices and Chromebooks.
• Groups settings: Control who can create and manage Groups, and set appropriate sharing policies.
• Marketplace apps settings: Monitor third-party app access to ensure compliance with your security guidelines.
• Calendar settings: Set sharing restrictions and visibility options for Calendar events.
• Sites settings: Manage who can create and view Sites and apply security controls around content sharing.

Best Practices for Educational Institutions

For schools and universities, it's essential to tailor Google's security recommendations to meet the unique needs of educational environments. For example, you can apply more stringent settings to protect younger students or adjust sharing permissions based on your school's privacy policies.

By following best practices and regularly reviewing Security Health, you can ensure that your Google Workspace environment remains secure and compliant with current security standards.

See Security health page - Google Workspace Admin Help for more detailed information on specific security settings.