Google Workspace earns DOD IL4 authorization

Today, we’re proud to announce that Google Workspace has achieved the U.S. Department of Defense’s (DOD) Impact Level 4 (IL4) authorization. This is an important milestone in our ongoing commitment to serving the needs of federal, state, local, and education entities, through our recently launched Google subsidiary, Google Public Sector. 

In an environment with a handful of legacy technology providers, public sector customers now have more choice to pick a secure communications and collaboration platform–Google Workspace–to advance their missions securely, retain their workforce (whether in-office or remotely), and save on costs. 

IL4 is a security requirement defined by the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) that defines security measures and controls related to the handling of Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI), including data related to critical infrastructure, defense, intelligence, finance, law enforcement, and proprietary business information.

The U.S. federal government has been clear about its long-standing goal of deploying multicloud solutions to help with redundancy and to drive more innovation. Now, with Google Workspace achieving IL4 authorization, agencies can empower their workforces—particularly the emerging generation of employees who want to use newer, best-of-breed tools—with access to modern technologies that help them seamlessly connect, create, and collaborate.

“In addition to helping government agencies and education entities grow and run organizations efficiently and securely, collaboration tools and platforms such as Google Workspace also help to shape and recruit the next generation of the workforce,” said Adelaide O'Brien, research vice president, IDC Government Insights. 

Google Workspace is built with security at its core
We believe security should be infused from the ground-up, at the architectural level, and applied to the user experience. With Google Workspace, security is built into every layer with a zero-trust approach to provide customers with always up-to-date protection against phishing, malware, ransomware, and other cyberattacks. 

Unlike other providers that offer isolated “government clouds” lagging in features and scalability, Google Workspace has obtained its IL4 authorization across our entire public cloud offering, with all the inherent benefits of Google Cloud’s reliability, scalability, and innovation. This means all customers can be confident they are collaborating securely, without having to deploy a separate government cloud limited in its capacity to support customer needs at scale. It also means that customers in highly regulated agencies and industries can operate seamlessly without having to incur additional cost and implementation complexity. 

“Obtaining the U.S. Department of Defense’s (DOD) Impact Level 4 authorization is an excellent achievement for the Google Public Sector team that will undoubtedly help accelerate its growth further in the federal markets as those customers are also seeking to digitally transform themselves in highly secure ways,” said Michael Diamond, senior technology and channels analyst, Futurum Research.

Google Workspace is currently deployed by federal entities like Defense Innovation Unit, and the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), and many other government organizations worldwide. 

For the latest information on our ongoing compliance efforts across the globe, visit our Compliance Resource Center, and for the latest information about how Google Cloud serves defense customers visit our Department of Defense | Google Cloud webpage.