Remediation in Google Workspace Security: What You Can Actually Do

Google Workspace has become the operational backbone for modern organizations, enabling collaboration, communication, and file sharing at scale. But, with great convenience comes great risk. Sensitive data is now scattered across Docs, Sheets, Slides, and third-party integrations, and managing security across this expanding SaaS ecosystem is becoming increasingly complex.

But, what does remediation actually look like inside Google Workspace? What are your real options as a security team, and more importantly – where do those options fall short?

In this article, we’ll break down what Google Workspace does (and doesn’t) allow you to remediate, explore the most common gaps that leave data exposed, and explain how security teams can take full control of their SaaS environments through effective Google Workspace Security practices. 

What Does Remediation Look Like in Google Workspace?

Remediation in this context means identifying and resolving security threats after they’ve occurred. These accidents are bound to happen, it's inevitable no matter how hard companies try. 

Google provides a solid foundation for SaaS collaboration, and its native admin tools offer some level of visibility and control. But as organizations scale, the threats multiply – and remediation becomes more reactive than proactive.

The most common security issues that require remediation include:

• Unmanaged Data Access: Files and folders shared too broadly, incorrect permissions, accessible to anyone, and could even be sneakily shared with personal emails or accounts.
• Insider Threats: High-risk unusual behavior from employees, contractors, or compromised accounts that pose a threat to your organization.
• Shadow Apps: Unapproved third-party SaaS applications that gain access to your environment via OAuth and operate under the radar.
• Misconfigurations: Admin settings that inadvertently expose data or allow excessive permissions, expanding your organization's attack surface and raising compliance issues.

While Google does give you the ability to take certain actions, it stops short of delivering the type of automation, visibility, and granularity that today’s security strategy demands.

It’s also important to remember: Google Workspace operates under a shared responsibility model. While Google secures the infrastructure, your organization is responsible for how users behave and how data is shared, which makes robust remediation essential.

Are There Native Remediation Capabilities in Google Workspace?

Google Workspace offers several built-in security and admin features, especially through the Admin Console, Security Center, and Drive audit logs. While still limited, the native remediation capabilities cover bare-minimum basics. Here’s what you can actually do when something goes wrong:

1. Revoke Access to Files and Folders

Admins can manually change sharing settings, remove collaborators, or restrict external access to Drive files. However, there’s no native automation to detect and remediate over-shared files at scale. 

And, its manual – which means lots of time, lots of resources, and probably hours wasted where security teams could be (and should be) focusing on more high impact threats. ‍

2. Modify Sharing Permissions

You can disable link sharing or enforce domain-level restrictions, but these settings can be bypassed if not strictly enforced or monitored continuously. 

Plus, if you disable link sharing and enforce restrictions, this is incredibly black and white. Modern organizations can’t have rigid enforcement like this – it severely hinders their business enablement and productivity! An ideal model here is to have time guardrails for when links are public and shared out – but Google can’t do this natively.

3. Suspend or Delete Users

Suspending a user immediately cuts off access, which is useful during incident response. However, it doesn’t address what the user already exposed or integrated. 

For example, if you suspect a user is exfiltrating data, you can cut off their access – good, right? Well, not if that user already shared data to their personal email or downloaded files before you caught it – which is most likely what happened.

4. Adjust Admin Roles and Privileges

Privilege creep can be mitigated by reassigning roles, but this often happens only after permissions have been abused or misused. At this point, the damage was already done. Remember when we said ‘reactive’ instead of ‘proactive’ above? This is a prime example of that.

5. Review and Manage Third-Party App Access

OAuth permissions can be reviewed and revoked for individual apps, but detecting risky apps requires manual investigation and ongoing monitoring. Again, the key word here is manual. 

In organizations where there's so many moving parts when it comes to security, you don't want to bog down your teams into manually investigating an application when they could be allocating their time and efforts elsewhere.

A Deeper Dive Into Google’s Native Remediation Limitations

While these tools are helpful, they share some critical drawbacks:

Manual Remediation

Most of the tasks above require admin intervention and offer zero bulk or automated options. Time, money, and resources wasted. 

Plus, not to mention that this actually hurts your security posture even further: every second a security team member spends manually remediating a micro issue, there's a macro threat lurking that needs his/her attention.

Lack of Granularity

It’s difficult to isolate specific users, files, or behaviors without a full understanding of who the user is, what actions they're taking in Google Workspace, and what their previous behavior has been. 

Google can’t show you any of this natively, and yet these insights are exactly what a security team needs to make informed & accurate decisions and distinctions of what's a risk or not, and what even needs to be remediated! 

No Cross-App Visibility

Google Workspace tools don’t account for the broader SaaS ecosystem – where many threats originate. What does this mean? Let’s say one of your sales reps integrated a third-party app – a GenAI scheduling tool – into their Google Workspace to help them coordinate meetings. In doing this, they clicked “Continue with Google” when logging in their new app. 

When they did this, that GenAI scheduling tool gained access to all that sales reps’ calendar data, pipeline info, meeting notes, and more. As an open door to exfiltration, nothing is worse than this. If you were just using native Google capabilities, you would 1) never even know this was happening, 2) you would never know the source of the exfiltration about to happen, and therefore 3) you would never even know to remediate access to this harmful app! Talk about a major limitation.

It's important to note that while yes, these are severe limitations – it's not Google's fault. It's not their job or responsibility to protect and secure your Google Workspace. Google is an iconic company, and it’s a lot of things – but it isn't a security application. Need further proof?

No mention of security – and that's how it should be! So, in order to make sure your Google Workspace is secure, you have to take matters into your own hands when it comes to protection and remediation.

Common Remediation Gaps (and Real-World Risks)

To continue, let's get into common gaps most companies face when it comes to remediation in Google Workspace. 

Let’s ground these concepts in reality. At DoControl, we’ve seen it all when it comes to data loss prevention and effective remediation strategies. Not only have we seen a lot, we've also helped a lot – we know what to look for and our platform knows what to do. Below are some common scenarios where native remediation is limited or ineffective:

Externally Shared Files Stay Open

Let’s say a user shares a Google Sheet with sensitive financials to a personal Gmail account, external partner, or just makes it a public link with “Anyone with the link can access” public sharing permissions. That user ends up leaving the company for a competitor a year later. That file with sensitive financials remains accessible FOREVER unless someone explicitly revokes it. 

Google doesn't automatically adjust sharing based on role changes or employment status. Now, that sensitive company data is in the possession of a competitor indefinitely, with no way to get it back.

Former Employees with Lingering Access

Offboarding a user from Google Workspace may suspend their primary account, but it doesn’t always revoke third-party OAuth access, sharing links they created, or the things they shared to their personal email account before they actually left. 

Native google has no way to report or remediate if a former employee did a mass download of files before leaving, or if they shared intellectual property to their personal email before leaving the company. 

Internal Oversharing

Employees often share documents broadly to get their work done as quickly as possible. They don't want to go through the trouble of private links not working, people requesting access, and slowing down their timelines. This can include entire folders shared across departments or company-wide access granted via links. 

This behavior is hardly ever malicious, but it's still harmful. These employee sharing behaviors also rarely trigger alerts, and there’s no automated mechanism in Google to roll back high-risk shares. With native Google capabilities, you’re basically flying blind when it comes to what files are even the problem. As a result, remediating it in any sort of capacity becomes nearly impossible. 

Unvetted Shadow Apps

With just a few clicks, users can connect unsanctioned SaaS tools to Google Workspace via OAuth. Google provides visibility into connected apps, but identifying risky ones – and cutting off access – is a largely manual effort without consistent policy enforcement.

There's no way in Google to effectively remediate risky shadow apps at scale, and with the rise of GenAI shadow apps becoming a new attack surface, this fact is even more terrifying!

Each of these gaps reflects a broader issue: you can’t secure what you can’t see or control. And in a world of ever-expanding SaaS sprawl, relying on Google’s native tools alone simply isn’t enough.

How DoControl Enables Scalable, Automated Remediation

Google Workspace gives you a starting point for remediation, but DoControl takes you across the finish line. Our platform is built to operationalize SaaS security at scale through automated workflows that detect, respond to, and remediate risks across your entire environment – with minimal manual effort.

While native Google Workspace tools require admins to chase down threats one file or app at a time, DoControl makes remediation continuous, intelligent, and automated. Here’s how:

Automated, Policy-Based Workflows for Real-Time Remediation

DoControl enables security teams to define and enforce policies that automatically remediate security issues as they arise. Whether it’s files being overshared, unvetted apps being connected, or suspicious user behavior, DoControl executes automated playbooks to:

• Revoke external or public sharing links
  
  
• Remove unauthorized collaborators
  
  
• Reassign file ownership
  
  
• Revoke third-party OAuth access
  
  
• Suspend high-risk user sessions
  
  
• Alert security teams with full context
  

and more!

These workflows run in real time – across tens of thousands of users and millions of files – freeing security teams from manual cleanup and allowing them to focus on high-impact investigations and strategic initiatives.

End-User Engagement That Promotes Secure Behavior

Security can’t just be top-down. DoControl incorporates end-user engagement directly into its remediation workflows, allowing security teams to build processes that educate, not just enforce.

Examples include:

• Preconfigured Slack/Email Notifications: Alert users when they violate a sharing policy and give them the chance to self-remediate. And, alerts security teams too.
  
  
• Approval Workflows: Allow users to request access exceptions that route to the appropriate manager, security team member, or IT team admin for approval, all tracked and governed!
  
  
• Just-In-Time Interventions: Intercept risky behavior (ex. sharing a sensitive file externally) in the moment, and educate users on secure alternatives.

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This approval-centric approach not only reduces friction, but also builds a more security-aware culture.

Time-Bound Sharing Controls to Prevent Long-Term Risk

As we mentioned before, an ideal way to mitigate risk in Google Workspace sharing is to set time limits, something that natively can’t be done. 

One of the most common long-tail risks in Google Workspace is indefinite external file sharing. A file shared with a vendor today could still be accessible years from now, unless someone remembers to revoke it.

With DoControl, you can:

• Automatically expire shared links after a defined period (ex. 7, 30, 60 or 90 days – you decide!)
  
  
• Revoke access based on user lifecycle events (ex. role changes, offboarding)

Engage users and follow up if a link they shared still needs to be shared (ex. sending a slack message asking a user every 2 weeks if a file they shared still needs to be public)

These time-based controls make file access temporary by default, ensuring sensitive data doesn’t live in the wild any longer than it should.

Built for Scale: Remediate Once, Apply Everywhere

What sets DoControl apart is its ability to operationalize remediation at the enterprise level. Whether you’re managing a few hundred employees or tens of thousands, our platform:

• Enforces policies across all users and files continuously
  
  
• Delivers consistent remediation actions, no matter the volume
  
  
• Offloads repetitive, manual work from security teams
  
  
• Gives full auditability of every action taken, automatically logged and reportable

With just one click, users can remediate up to 1,000,000 files. Security teams reclaim their time, reduce risk faster, and can focus on strategic initiatives instead of playing cleanup.

Where Google Ends and DoControl Begins

Google Workspace provides a strong foundation for collaboration, but its native remediation capabilities are limited, manual, and reactive. As SaaS sprawl grows, so does the risk. Security teams need automation, visibility, and control that goes beyond what Google alone can offer.

DoControl fills that gap. We deliver automated, scalable remediation across Google Workspace and your broader SaaS ecosystem – from revoking risky file shares to unsharing shadow apps, enforcing time-bound access, engaging end users, and containing identity threats in real time.

With DoControl, remediation becomes proactive, not just reactive.

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