Wednesday, 22 February 2006

Putting 'Google Desktop 3 for Enterprise' Security Fears to Rest

If you are of the many viewing Google's 'Search Across Computers' feature released last week in Google Desktop 3 beta with suspicion, a new post on the official Google enterprise blog tries to put to rest some of the misconceptions about how Google Desktop 3 works, particularly for enterprise users. "...So we should point you to Google Desktop 3 for Enterprise (beta) which can put your security fears to rest. This product has all the features of the consumer version -- and then some. It also includes full administrative control. Administrators can use the standard group policy settings to completely disable product features, such as the Search Across Computer functionality, so users cannot send documents from the work computer to their home PC."

"The folks at Gartner have written about this, and we agree with their recommendation: "Enterprises that are not using Google Desktop for Enterprise but are allowing employees to use Google's desktop search application should start using the enterprise edition immediately and restrict its use accordingly."

"In addition, Enterprise customers have asked for some features we've now added. These features include the ability to set time-based document retention policies for different content types, and a policy to control the indexing load on your Exchange servers. We think that the Enterprise version only strengthens a solid product. If you're reading this at work, you should consider it."