Chrome Enterprise goes Premium with new security and management features

At its Google Cloud Next conference in Las Vegas, Google on Tuesday extended its Chrome Enterprise product suite with the launch of Chrome Enterprise Premium.

Google has long offered an enterprise-centric version of its Chrome browser. With Chrome Enterprise, IT departments get the ability to manage employees’ browser settings, the extensions they install and web apps they use, for example. More importantly, though, they also get a number of new security controls around data loss prevention, malware protection, phishing prevention and the Zero Trust access to SaaS apps.

Chrome Enterprise Premium, which will cost $6/user/month, mostly extends the security capabilities of the existing service, based on the insight that browsers are now the endpoints where most of the high-value work inside a company is done.

“Authentication, access, communication and collaboration, administration, and even coding are all browser-based activities in the modern enterprise,” Parisa Tabriz, Google’s VP for Chrome, wrote in Tuesday’s announcement. “Endpoint security is growing more challenging due to remote work, reliance on an extended workforce, and the proliferation of new devices that aren’t part of an organization’s managed fleet. As these trends continue to accelerate and converge, it’s clear that the browser is a natural enforcement point for endpoint security in the modern enterprise.”

These new features include additional enterprise controls to enforce policies and manage software updates and extensions, as well as new security reporting features and forensic capabilities that can be integrated with third-party security tools. Chrome Enterprise Premium takes Zero Trust a step further with context-aware access controls that can also mitigate the risk of data leaks. This includes approved applications and those that were not sanctioned by the IT department.

“With Chrome Enterprise Premium, we have confidence in Google’s security expertise, including Project Zero’s cutting-edge security research and fast security patches. We set up data loss prevention restrictions and warnings for sharing sensitive information in applications like generative AI platforms and noticed a noteworthy 50% reduction in content transfers,” said Nick Reva, head of corporate security engineering at Snap.

The new service is now generally available.