Google today announced that in their G Suite accounts, admins will be able to set up alerts based on if Google believes that a government based attack has been attempted on any users within the domain.

Google writes -

If an admin chooses to turn the feature on, an email alert (to admins) is triggered when we believe a government-backed attacker has likely attempted to access a user’s account or computer through phishing, malware, or another method. It does not necessarily mean that the account has been compromised or that there was a widespread attack on an organization.

I have been the G Suite administrator for a very large domain for some time now, and I have often wondered why political campaigns don’t use something like G Suite for their email, considering the security tools that Google offers. Between security keys to log in, Google AI backed phishing and malware detection, spoofed email and domain detection, and several other security tools, I feel like it’s definitely possible to protect something like a political campaign from email attacks.

This new tool makes total sense given the current political climate, as well as the information companies like Google are able to gather at scale. I wasn’t expecting any sort of announcement like this, but I think it’s a really cool tool.