The Material Advantage for Google Workspace

Introduction

Google Workspace is the engine of modern productivity. It’s where your teams collaborate, innovate, and drive the business forward. But this concentration of critical data and communication in a single, cloud-native ecosystem creates a uniquely complex security challenge.

Foundational security from Google is a necessary starting point, but mature security programs recognize the need for more. It's about building on that base to achieve true resilience across the entire connected platform.

“I don't think there's another vendor that kind of approaches both email and collaboration suite security as holistically [as Material Security]” - Zach Morris, Corporate Security Engineer, Headway

Enhancing security in Google Workspace effectively requires a partner that understands the platform on a native level. It demands a holistic view that sees beyond just email. And it requires intelligent automation that frees your team to focus on what matters most.

Built for Workspace, by Workspace users

Many security vendors treat cloud office suites as interchangeable endpoints. Their solutions are often generic, retrofitted proxies or agents that create friction and administrative overhead. Material was built differently. We are one of the few security vendors built for Google Workspace, we use it ourselves, and we know the platform inside and out.

This native expertise means we understand the nuances of the ecosystem, from API changes to administrative workflows. We’re not just integrated; we’re in sync.

“Material is built for Google Workspace. This is a very specific problem that we're solving for, and they do it really well.” Says Lisa Hall, CISO for Safebase. “When things change, Material's there changing with them, and I feel like we can really keep up with whatever's coming next.”

Because our architecture is API-based and purpose-built for the cloud, implementation is measured in minutes and hours, not weeks and months. There are no agents to deploy, no MX records to change, and no disruption to your users. Just ask Jae Ward, Corporate Security Analyst at Lyft: “The first thing that grabbed me about Material was how cleanly it integrated with G Suite. The day we set it up, we were done in an hour and there weren’t any workflow disruptions.”

This speed-to-value is a consistent experience, allowing security teams to immediately begin reducing risk across their environment–across both Google Workspace or Microsoft 365. “Having Material in place, we have the ability to quickly connect to the environment regardless of if it's Google or Office 365” says Daniel Ayala, SVP IT & Security at Dotmatics. “We then are able to quickly get to protecting our environments in a way that used to take weeks and now we can do it in a day.”  

Holistic security for a holistic platform

An attacker doesn't see a distinction between Gmail and Google Drive; they see a single environment full of valuable data access through a single account. A modern security strategy must adopt the same holistic view.

Forward-thinking security leaders recognize that collaboration risk extends beyond the inbox and are actively seeking solutions that can protect the entire workspace. 

“Workspace collaboration these days is not just about email. We wanted a tool that could expand into the broader office workspace collaboration space.” - Frank Wang, Lead Security Engineer, Headway

That doesn’t mean email security is an afterthought: it’s where we started our journey and remains core to our approach to security. “Google does good enough when it comes to filtering and we’ve accepted that. We enhance our security further with Material.” - Vince Parras, Corporate Security & Audit, Carta

Material combines our robust inbound email security with automated security for Google Drive and industry-first zero trust data protection for email at-rest. Material’s unique ability to both monitor and correct posture and configuration issues and detect and respond to active threats provides unmatched account takeover resilience. 

This unified approach not only provides superior risk awareness, but makes it dramatically easier to operationalize that awareness. “It's a game changer to extend detection and response capabilities to cover Gmail and Drive along with visibility and control over our workspace posture,” says Devdatta Akhawe, Head of Security for Figma. “Our team has a single pane of glass for all of Google Workspace security.” 

By breaking down the traditional silos between email security and data security, we offer a comprehensive view that few others can.

Reclaiming time with intelligent automation

Even with the best visibility, security teams are often too understaffed and overwhelmed to act on every alert. The sheer volume of manual, repetitive tasks—triaging user-reported phishing, remediating risky file shares, correcting posture drift—is a major drag on efficiency and morale.

Material is designed to solve this problem with intelligent, automated workflows that act as a force multiplier for your team.

• User Report Automation: When a user reports a phishing email, Material can automatically analyze it, find all other instances across the organization, and remove them. The entire organization is protected from the first user report, without an analyst ever touching a keyboard.
• Data Exposure: When a sensitive file in Google Drive is improperly shared, Material can detect it and remediate it according to your team’s risk tolerance: from notifying the user and allowing them to self-heal, or automatically revoke the risky link directly, while notifying the user and logging the event.
• Phishing Response: We provide automated workflows that accelerate the entire incident response lifecycle, from initial detection to final remediation.

This focus on automation allows your team to move from a reactive, ticket-based posture to a proactive, strategic one.

“If we review the last 5 years of incidents across multiple industries, both sophisticated and wide-spread attacks started with a successful intrusion through phishing. Material gives us an extra layer of protection when it matters most—and accelerates our detection and response time by delivering a strong workflow.” - Nico Waisman, Former CISO, Lyft

By automating the routine, we free your most valuable resources—your people—to focus on the complex challenges that truly require their expertise.

A strategic partner for Google Workspace

Securing Google Workspace requires more than just another security layer; it requires a strategic partner that understands the ecosystem at its core. Material delivers on this with deep native expertise for seamless integration, a holistic view across email and Drive for complete risk visibility, and powerful automation to make your team more effective.

See how Material can transform your Google Workspace security.

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