Access Transparency and Access Approval

Before we discuss the Access Transparency and Access Approval products, let’s understand why they are so important. We discussed in the previous section how transparency plays a key role in establishing trust, and it also helps Google to differentiate its security posture. At the time of writing, other major cloud service providers (CSPs) do not offer transparency logs. Customers who are highly regulated or have compliance requirements need to view and share logs of activities performed by their CSPs. Analysts such as Gartner have highlighted transparency logs as a key feature for CSPs.

Now that we have established the importance of transparency for CSPs, we will look at the product capability that Google offers. Google has two products for transparency: Access Transparency, which provides near real-time logs whenever Google administrators access your Google Cloud environment, and Access Approvals, where you can control administrative...