Introducing Assured Workloads in Canada and Australia, and new features for all

At Google Cloud, we continue to invest in our vision of invisible security where advanced capabilities are engineered into our platforms, operations are simplified, and stronger outcomes can be achieved. Assured Workloads is a Google Cloud service that helps customers create and maintain controlled environments that accelerate running more secure and compliant workloads, including enforcement of data residency, administrative and personnel controls, and managing encryption keys.  

Today, we are extending these capabilities to more regions. Assured Workloads for Canada is now generally available, and Assured Workloads for Australia is now available in preview. We are also making it easier for customers to get started with Assured Workloads by automating the onboarding process, and offering new tools to define specific compliance requirements and then validate the compliance posture of your Assured Workloads. These new capabilities can further speed deployment of regulated workloads on Google Cloud. Customers can get started today here.

Assured Workloads for Canada 

Today, Assured Workloads for Canada is generally available to all customers with a premium Assured Workloads subscription, and existing customers can use it right away. Assured Workloads for Canada provides:

• Data residency in either a specific Canadian cloud region or across any of our Canadian cloud regions (currently Toronto and Montreal)

• Personnel access and technical support services restricted to personnel located in Canada

• Cryptographic control over data, including customer-managed encryption keys. Data encrypted with keys stored within a region can only be decrypted in that region.  

• Service usage restrictions to centrally administer which Google Cloud products are available within the Assured Workloads environment  

Assured Workloads for Australia

Assured Workloads for Australia is available in Preview today. This launch supports public sector customers in Australia following the certification of Google Cloud against the Hosting Certification Framework (HCF) by Australia’s Digital Transformation Agency. Assured Workloads for Australia provides:

• Data residency in either a specific Australian cloud region or across any of our Australian cloud regions (currently Sydney and Melbourne.)

• Personnel access and technical support services restricted to five countries (U.S., U.K., Australia, Canada, and New Zealand.) Initially launching with just U.S. persons, we plan on expanding to more support persons next year.

• Cryptographic control over data, including customer managed encryption keys. Data encrypted with keys stored within a region can only be decrypted in that region 

• Service usage restrictions to centrally administer which Google Cloud products are available within the Assured Workloads environment  

Assured Workloads Monitoring

We are also excited to announce the general availability of Assured Workloads Monitoring. With Assured Workloads Monitoring, customers can get more visibility into organization policy changes that result in compliance violations. Assured Workloads Monitoring scans customer environments in real time and provides alerts whenever a change violates the defined compliance posture.

Assured Workloads Monitoring can also help customers take corrective actions. The monitoring dashboard shows which policy is being violated and provides instructions on how to resolve the finding. Customers also have the ability to mark violations as exceptions and keep an audit trail of approved changes. Click here to learn more about Assured Workloads Monitoring and how you can use it to help keep your organization compliant.

FedRAMP Moderate self-serve onboarding

Assured Workloads provides the ability for customers to create U.S. FedRAMP Moderate environments at no charge. We’ve now made it even easier for customers to create these environments with just a few clicks. Click here to get started.

Conclusion

Assured Workloads helps accelerate running more secure and compliant workloads on Google Cloud. These announcements grow our global capabilities so customers can operate across markets with a consistent set of services and controls. To learn more about Assured Workloads, check out our customer session from this year’s Google Cloud Next and our Assured Workloads video walkthrough series on YouTube.