Google announces 'Advanced Protection' for vulnerable accounts

Google has announced a free program aimed at users that are at high risk for attacks- like the journalist, business leaders, and political campaign teams. The program called Advanced Protection focuses on defending against phishing, accidental sharing, and fraudulent access to accounts.

The program initially consists of three elements- defending Gmail and Google account users against phishing attacks by requiring 2FA via a token generated by a hardware security key, locking down the risk of malicious applications grabbing sensitive data by automatically limiting full access to Gmail and Drive to just Google apps (for now), and reducing the risk of hackers gaining access to a Gmail account via impersonation by adding more steps to the account recovery process.

Users who are a part of the Advanced Protection program will have extra steps in place during the account recovery process. The feature also automatically limits full access to Gmail and Google Drive for specific apps. Google says that the security of your account will be continually updated to meet emerging threats.

The Advanced Protection program is available to anyone with a regular Google account, though users will need to have a Physical Key, as well as Chrome for sign-up. It seems Google is focussing too much on security measures for users. Earlier this week, Google also introduced some new security features for Chrome.