The Risks of Storing Sensitive Data in Google Drive

With teams collaborating on SaaS apps like Google Workspace Day in, day out, sensitive data is constantly being shared and stored in files that your security team may not even be aware of. Whether it’s your customer’s PHI, company secrets you need to keep safe, or your employee’s bank details you want to protect, SaaS apps can contain hordes of sensitive data that a hacker would love to gain access to. In 2022, the average cost of a data breach was $4.35m - the highest it’s ever been. While the threat of a data breach never really goes away, the damage it can cause to your business is something firmly within your control. For instance, minimizing the amount of data a hacker can access could reduce the potentially catastrophic impact on your business.

At Metomic, we’re big advocates of keeping productivity high and allowing employees to do their jobs effectively, while alerting them to the risks of sharing sensitive information. In Q1 2023, we built our free Google Drive Risk Report to help people understand where their data is stored, who has access to it, what files are publicly accessible, and how they can ensure they can protect their most sensitive data. The collective findings are outlined in this report, showing the risky nature of storing sensitive data in Google Drive.