October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month, and Google is celebrating with a series of security announcements this week.
Security is a priority for everyone these days, and with the alarming news constantly being published, you may be concerned about the safety of your personal information online. 
Rest assured: in your Google Account, your data is safe with the best protection features on the planet, and Google will continue to improve them to ensure your information remains safe.
This week, Google is announcing some new protection features to help you stay safe online.
Personalized advice from the new Security Checkup
Google is launching a revamped Security Checkup, which now provides personalized guidance to help you improve your account security. Instead of the same, passive checklist for everyone, the Security Checkup is a personalized guide to protecting your data.
Security Checkup provides a clear security status and personalized advice to strengthen your account security
When you visit the Security Checkup, you’ll automatically see your security status—a green tick means you’re safe, and a yellow or red exclamation mark means there’s at least one issue you need to resolve. The Checkup is now your personal security advisor—a helpful “best friend”—making it easier for you to keep your account safe.
You can be sure that the new Security Checkup will continue to evolve as new threats emerge, to provide you with relevant, up-to-date security tips that you can use to keep your account protected.
You can take the Security Checkup at g.co/securitycheckup
Phishing prevention protection in Chrome.
Google Safe Browsing has helped protect Chrome users from phishing attacks for over 10 years and now protects over 3 billion devices every day by displaying warnings to users before they visit dangerous websites or download dangerous files.
Safe Browsing scans the web for these dangerous sites. However, if a phishing site is created and used for attacks, even the fastest scanners can’t warn users fast enough. Drawing on Google’s decades of experience detecting phishing sites, Safe Browsing information can now allow Google to predict risks in real time.
This knowledge is being used to test new predictive phishing protection in Chrome. Soon, when you enter your Google Account username and password on a website that Google suspects might be stealing your information, it will add extra protections to make sure your account isn’t compromised. This protection will apply even if you later use a different browser.
Example of what a user might face if they enter their username and security password on a suspected phishing website
Google plans to extend its phishing protection to all passwords you've saved in Chrome and encourage other apps and browsers that use Safe Browsing technology, such as Safari, Firefox, and Snapchat, to use it.
And Google doesn’t stop there. To meet the needs of users who have valuable data on their accounts, Google is announcing the Advanced Protection Program. Advanced Protection provides Google’s strongest security for those who believe they are at increased risk of cyberattack and need stronger protection for their personal accounts.
Once you sign up for Advanced Protection, Google will continuously update your account security to address emerging threats. Advanced Protection will always contain the strongest protection features Google has to offer.
Initially, the program focuses on three basic protection functions:
The Strongest Defense Against Phishing: Security keys – small USB or wireless devices – have long been considered the most secure version of 2-Step Verification and the best protection against phishing. Advanced Protection requires the use of security keys to log in to your account and will automatically block any attempt to log in without your security keys, even if someone has stolen your password.
Share your data only with trusted apps: Sometimes users inadvertently allow malicious apps to access their Google data. Attackers can trick users into granting such access in order to get to their data without having to sign in to their account first. Advanced protection automatically prevents this from happening by restricting access to Gmail and Drive files to known trusted apps.
Prevent fraudulent access to your account: Another common way hackers try to gain access to your account is by impersonating you and pretending to be “locked out” of your account. Extra steps have been added to prevent this during account recovery – including additional reviews and requests for more details about why you lost access to your account. Because this can take extra time, Google wants to make sure you never get locked out of your account. That’s why Advanced Protection requires you to install an additional backup for your Security Keys before you can sign up.
Andrew Ford Lyons, Technology Pillar Manager, Internews Europe, states:
“The key advantage of the Advanced Protection Program is that once you install it, it runs in the background, doing its job discreetly…
Journalists, human rights defenders, environmental campaigners, and civil society activists working on sensitive issues can find themselves targeted by well-informed and capable adversaries… For those already facing increasing threats, having confidence in the security of their account access is essential. For those whose work may make their profile more visible, setting this up can be seen as a necessary deterrent.”
Anyone with a personal Gmail account can sign up for Advanced Protection, a new personalized plan for those who need Google’s strongest security. (G Suite admins can refer to Strengthening Security Keys and OAuth apps whitelisting, which provide a similar level of protection for G Suite accounts. To sign up, visit g.co/advancedprotection .)
