Google Desktop has become something of a savior for many business users, quickly finding lost emails, old Word documents and alike. But the search company has had its latest Google Desktop 3 Beta software criticized by Gartner for a serious security flaw which could see many organizations’ endpoint security efforts rendered useless.
The trouble is that data from the user’s network is transferred to remote Google servers, where it is stored and can be searched for up to 30 days. According to Gartner, this represents a serious threat of lost Intellectual Property, which will more than many organizations can stomach.
As such, the advice has to be not to install the latest version of the software, which raises the potential for a serious data loss or identity theft incident. As a minimum, companies are advised to disable the “Search Across Computers” facility in the latest Beta.
The problem for many organizations is that they will have little or no visibility of who has installed the Google Desktop software. Auto-inventory solutions like Centennial Discovery 2005 can help identify the presence of unwanted or potentially dangerous software on the network, helping administrators take action to close any security gaps.
