Policy-enforced TLS in Google Apps

In the year and a half since we acquired Postini, we've integrated a number of their message security features into Google Apps Premier Edition, including additional spam and virus filtering, content policy management tools, and archiving. Today we're pleased to announce the addition of another feature to Google Apps that many of you have been asking for: policy-enforced Transport Layer Security (TLS, RFC 2246) to help you secure the transport of messages between domains with a simple point-and-click interface.

With policy-enforced TLS, IT administrators can set up policies for securely sending and receiving mail between specific domains. For example, you could specify that all external mail sent by your accounting team members with your bank be secured with the TLS standard, and defer if TLS is not possible. Similarly, you could mandate a secure TLS connection between your domain and your outside legal counsel, auditors, and any other partners with whom your employees may trade sensitive communications. The new functionality makes it easy for an IT admin to use the TLS standard for reliable, secure email delivery – with no hardware or software to add or maintain.

We're also making a change to the message discovery and archiving feature in Google Apps for new customers. We've learned that most of our customers want at least one year of archiving, so the 90-day message archive is no longer being offered to customers who sign up after April 22. All customers can continue to buy one year of message archiving with unlimited storage for $13 per user per year, and up to 10 years of archiving with unlimited storage for $33 per user per year. Note that those of you already using Premier Edition will continue to be able to retain mail for 90 days.

Enforce an email footer to apply to outbound emails.

On the 'Outbound Servers' tab, set your TLS policies easily in the Google Postini Admin console. Settings can apply to inbound and outbound messages.

Let us know what you think about today's news. We're committed to providing the world class security and compliance technology you need in an easy and affordable way, and we welcome your comments and feedback.

Posted by Navneet Goel and Matt O'Connor, Product Managers, Google Postini services team