Privacy and security FAQ

With Google, your institution’s data is protected by one of the world’s most advanced, secure, and reliable cloud infrastructures. Our multifaceted digital protection is built upon six progressive layers to deliver defense-in-depth, 24/7/365. Our cloud-native security stack equips education organizations with industry-leading data encryption, both at rest and in transit, along with enterprise-grade identity and access management, custom hardware running on a hardened operating system, up-to-the-second backups, and more. Because Google controls the entire hardware and software stack, we can rapidly respond to a wide range of security threats. Our secure-by-design foundation continuously monitors for misconfigurations, vulnerabilities, and threats, providing real-time visibility and alerts. This modern and AI-optimized security operations platform helps keep your institution’s data private, safe, and secure, while maintaining digital sovereignty.

• Read and share our Safer learning with Google for Education policy one-pager for answers to your school community’s top security and privacy questions
• Read our K-12 Cybersecurity Guidebook for best practices on protecting your school against threats
• More about safer learning with Google for Education
• More about security
• Read our report on Google infrastructure security design
• Discover how our data centers are designed with six layers of physical security
• Discover how Google Distributed Cloud air-gapped meets stringent sovereignty and regulatory requirements
• Introducing Google Unified Security – a full-stack, intelligent security solution

Our industry-leading global network is built with multilayered, full-stack security that can handle even extreme shifts in demand. From custom-designed data centers to private undersea cables that transfer data between continents, we operate one of the world’s most secure and reliable cloud infrastructures. Our infrastructure handles more than 100 billion search queries each month and scales services such as Gmail to hundreds of millions of users with guaranteed 99.9% availability and no scheduled downtime. It’s continuously monitored to protect your data and keep it available. And in the event of a disruption, platform services can be automatically and instantly shifted from one facility to another so that they can continue without interruption.

• More about reliability

Providing a safer way to learn is at the foundation of all Google Workspace for Education products and services, and every single one adheres to the highest educational standards of privacy and compliance. Google Workspace for Education Core Services are free of ads, and protected against spam and cyberthreats. Google Workspace is one of the world’s most secure cloud-based productivity suites.

We foster a safer age-based experience for students by offering advanced admin controls and policies so schools can effectively manage content and applications accessed with a Google Workspace for Education account. Our tools enable admins to limit service and content access for younger users and provide SafeSearch and Safe Sites settings by default. For all users, Gmail blocks more than 99.9% of spam, phishing attempts, and malware, powered by Google’s AI.

Built-in automated protections provide 24/7 monitoring, encryption, and security alerts. An easy-to-use dashboard puts all of your settings and analytics reports in one place, giving you full visibility and control of your data and security policies. Premium upgrades provide additional proactive security capabilities that meet the needs of your individual institution.

Yes. Data encryption by default is an important piece of the Google Workspace for Education security strategy, and encryption helps to protect your emails, chats, video meetings, files, and other data. Data is encrypted at rest and in transit, ensuring that your messages are safe not only when they move between you and Google’s servers, but also as they move between Google’s data centers.

• More about encryption

Your data is logically separated as if it were on its own server. Advanced security protections are in place to help prevent unauthorized parties from accessing your data. In fact, all user accounts are protected by this secure architecture that ensures that one user cannot see another user’s data. This is similar to how customer data is segmented in other shared infrastructures, such as online banking applications. Even more so, admins can set up additional data controls via Google Admin console.

• Learn more about ChromeOS data controls

Google Workspace for Education offers three editions to give admins a choice for the solution that best suits the needs of their institution.

Providing secure digital learning environments is foundational to Google for Education. The following features are offered within each edition of Google Workspace for Education:

• Centralize control with Admin console, your unified tool for privacy, security, data, and device management
• Alert center: Provides a complete view into security with notifications, alerts, and actions
• Identity and access management: Manage access to tools with two-factor authentication, single sign-on, and password management
• Utilize the Chromebook power button as a security key with your Google sign-in
• Implement secure passwordless authentication with passkeys
• Data loss protection (DLP): Helps prevent the loss or theft of data in Gmail and Drive by allowing you to set your own automated rules and policies
• Vault: Support your unique data retention and eDiscovery requirements by retaining, searching, and exporting data
• Block more than 99.9% of spam, phishing attempts, and malware in Gmail

Build on your secure foundation with advanced security capabilities that enable a more proactive approach to your organization’s security. With Google Workspace for Education Standard and Google Workspace for Education Plus, get all the security offerings above, and:

• Proactive prevention: Tighten your security across your domain with security health monitoring and best practices recommendations
• Advanced detection: Provides analytics and insights through your security center dashboard to help you address security risks
• Quick remediation: Remediate malware, phishing, spam, and other cyberattacks by quickly identifying issues and taking action from a central console

• Advanced controls: Endpoint management to centrally deploy and manage devices, defining geographic data regions to limit or distribute data where required for compliance best practices, and Context-Aware Access and application licensing and management controls

• Client-side encryption (CSE): Keep your organization’s data private with end-to-end encryption that Google servers and third parties can’t decrypt, giving your organization greater control over access to its data
  

All Google Workspace for Education editions offer admins full flexibility and control to change default settings for entire education organizations, classes, or individuals. By default, students under 18 have access to content that is deliberately limited to help ensure a safer and protected online experience.

• More about Google Workspace for Education security and privacy features
• Compare Google Workspace for Education editions

Yes. There have been zero successful ransomware attacks on Chromebooks as of 2025. And that’s because security is built in at every step – from our data centers to computer hardware, mobile devices, and user authentication.

Chromebooks are designed with multiple layers of security to keep them safe from viruses and malware without any additional security software. Every time you power on a Chromebook, your security is checked. And because they can be managed centrally, Chromebooks make it easy for school IT administrators to configure policies and settings, like enabling safe browsing or blocking malicious sites. Chromebooks have the following built in:

• Automatic updates: Help ensure your malware protection is always up to date. We provide 10 years of automatic updates, more than any other operating system today.
• Verified boot: Allows Chromebooks to self-check for malware and auto-repair if corrupted.
• Sandboxing: Helps prevent the spread of viruses by making sure each webpage and application runs in its own walled environment.
• 256-bit data encryption: All devices can leverage 256-bit data encryption, which helps to protect Chromebooks and maintain resistance to attacks.
• Chrome sync: Allows students to sign in to any Chromebook or Chrome browser to access all their apps, settings, and preferences securely.
• Data security controls: Helps IT admins monitor, secure, and manage data on their network.
• ChromeOS data controls: Set rules to protect against data leakage based on the data source, destination, and user.

• More about Chromebook automatic updates
• More about Chromebook privacy
• Read a series of articles about privacy in Chrome

Chromebooks are a secure platform for administering student assessments. With Chromebooks, you can disable students’ access to browse the web during an exam in addition to disabling external storage, screenshots, and the ability to print. Both PARCC (see TestNav) and the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium have verified that Chromebooks meet hardware and operating system requirements for online students.

• Configure Chromebooks for testing

With Chrome Education Upgrade, school IT administrators can manage settings to give students as much or as little access as the school desires, to provide yet another layer of data security and centralized management capabilities, including:

• Advanced security: Prevent unauthorized access to school data with advanced security features that allow IT to easily disable the device. Devices can also be set as ephemeral, which removes user data at the end of a session, or set up with a persistent enrollment to prevent unrestricted access.
• 24/7 support: Get the added benefit of ChromeOS troubleshooting assistance with 24/7 admin support. Call Google at any time if an issue comes up, at no additional cost.
• Simplified deployment: Provides IT admins with access to device policies and fleet oversight capabilities, both school-issued and student-owned, all from the easy-to-use, cloud-based Google Admin console.
• Powerful access controls: Manage access to platforms and school data – putting IT in control of who can access. Managed guest sessions and kiosk mode enable shared device use cases; for example, to showcase student work or in a library setting.

• Learn more about Chrome Education Upgrade

To ensure we’re bringing AI to students responsibly, we consulted with child safety and development experts like the Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI), partnered with learning science experts, tested with youth advisory panels, and continue to work closely with educators around the world. Additionally, we’ve built advanced admin controls and user safeguards across Google for Education AI-powered tools.

• The Gemini app: Gemini is available to students 13+ (or the applicable age in your country) with enterprise-grade data protection while using their Google Workspace for Education accounts, and it will soon be available to students of all ages in every language and country where they can access Gemini.
• Chrome browser and Chromebooks: Gen AI features are available to educators and students 18 years and older. These features are disabled by default for users under 18 with admin controls in Google Admin console.
• Gemini for Workspace: Available to educators and students 18 years and older with a Gemini Education license.

Gemini is a Core Service covered under your Google Workspace for Education Terms of Service. When using your Google Workspace for Education account with Gemini, your chats are not reviewed by human reviewers or otherwise used to improve generative AI models.

Google is committed to providing a safe and age-appropriate experience for even the youngest learners. The youth experience in the Gemini app has strict policies and guardrails to help prevent users under 18 from getting inappropriate responses. Gemini also provides sources and citations in results, a feature to double-check responses using Google Search. These measures help ensure that Gemini provides a secure and age-appropriate environment for younger users, empowering them to explore AI responsibly. Here are some key features and policies in place:

• School-controlled access: Admins can easily manage who has access to the Gemini app in the Admin console.
• Enhanced content filtering: Gemini has implemented strict content policies and default protections to filter out age-inappropriate content, ensuring a safer online environment. Before allowing student access to Gemini, Google trained the model to recognize content that is inappropriate for younger users, such as content related to illegal or age-gated substances, and implemented safety features to help prevent it from appearing in responses.
• Onboarding and education: To help them use Gemini responsibly, users under 18 receive a special onboarding experience, including AI literacy resources developed in collaboration with younger users and experts. These resources, shared with all users under 18 years old, include a video, endorsed by ConnectSafely and the Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI).
• Automatic double-check: The first time a user asks a fact-based question, Gemini automatically runs a double-check response feature, which helps evaluate whether there’s content across the web to substantiate Gemini’s response.
• Helpful tooltips: Gemini includes tooltips – short, helpful messages that encourage critical thinking and fact-checking. These tooltips appear when students hover their cursor over certain elements, reminding them to use features like double-check and fact-checking.
• Privacy protections: All users signed in to their Google Workspace for Education account receive enterprise-grade data protection in Gemini, free of charge. This means your data isn’t used or reviewed by anyone to improve AI models.

Our industry-leading security, third-party audits and certifications, documentation, and contract commitments help support your compliance. We make contractual commitments in our Cloud Data Processing Addendum and Google Workspace for Education Agreement and provide transparency around data processing in our Google Cloud Privacy Notice. And whether it’s real-time dashboards to verify system performance, our ongoing auditing of our processes, or sharing the location of our data centers, we’re committed to providing all our users utmost transparency. It’s your data, and we want you to know what happens with it so that you can always make informed choices.

• More about compliance
• More about transparency
• How Google Workspace protects your data
• Read our Google Workspace for Education data protection implementation guide