Cis Gworkspace 6.2

6.2 Ensure Government-backed attacks is configured

Profile Applicability

• Enterprise Level 1

Description

Configuring and enabling the setting that an alert will be generated when Google believes your users are being targeted by a government-backed attack.

Rationale

Ensuring that administrators are alerted that they may be being targeted by a government-backed entity allows them time to check their defenses and potentially up their sensitivity for anomalies.

NOTE: Google sends these out of an abundance of caution -- the notice does not necessarily mean that the account has been compromised or that there is a widespread attack. Rather, the notice reflects Google's assessment that a government-backed attacker has likely attempted to access the user's account or computer through phishing or malware, for example.

Impact

This setting should have no impact on the end user but will send emails to super administrators when triggered.

Audit

To verify this setting via the Google Workspace Admin Console:

1. Log in to https://admin.google.com as an administrator.
2. Select Rules.
3. Under Google protects you by default select View list.
4. Scroll to Government-backed attacks and select it.
5. Ensure that Alerts is set to On.
6. Ensure the Severity is set to High.
7. Ensure that Email Notifications is set to On.
8. Ensure that Email notification recipients is set to All super administrators.

Remediation

To verify this setting via the Google Workspace Admin Console:

1. Log in to https://admin.google.com as an administrator.
2. Select Rules.
3. Under Google protects you by default select View list.
4. Scroll to Government-backed attacks and select it.
5. Within the Actions pane, click the edit pencil on the right side of the pane.
6. Select Send to alert center (This will result in the alert being set to On).
7. Set the alert severity to High.
8. To enable emails when this alert condition is met, select Send email notifications. Once enabled, the All super administrators option is selected by default.
9. Click Review to confirm the values.
10. Click Update Rule.
11. Confirm that the Government-backed attacks shows an Alert status of On in the list.

Default Value

Government-backed attacks is ON.

References

1. https://support.google.com/a/answer/3230421

CIS Controls