Google Cloud unveils advanced AI security tools & SOC updates
With the introduction of AI across various sectors, organisations are increasingly concerned with the risks presented by sophisticated AI agents. Google Cloud has responded by expanding on the security measures available within its Security Command Centre, emphasising protection for AI agents and ecosystems using tools such as Sensitive Data Protection and Model Armour.
According to Jon Ramsey, Vice President and General Manager, Google Cloud Security, "AI presents an unprecedented opportunity for organizations to redefine their security posture and reduce the greatest amount of risk for the investment. From proactively finding zero-day vulnerabilities to processing vast amounts of threat intelligence data in seconds to freeing security teams from toilsome work, AI empowers security teams to achieve not seen before levels of defence and efficiency."
Expanded protection for agentic AI
Google Cloud has detailed three new capabilities for securing AI agents in Google Agentspace and Google Agent Builder. The first, expanded AI agent inventory and risk identification, will enable automated discovery of AI agents and Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers. This feature aims to help security teams quickly identify vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and high-risk interactions across their AI agent estate.
The second, advanced in-line protection and posture controls, extends Model Armour's real-time security assurance to Agentspace prompts and responses. This enhancement is designed to provide controls against prompt injection, jailbreaking, and sensitive data leakage during agent interactions. In parallel, the introduction of specialised posture controls will help AI agents adhere to defined security policies and standards.
Proactive threat detection rounds out these developments, introducing detections for risky behaviours and external threats to AI agents. These detections, supported by intelligence from Google and Mandiant, assist security teams in responding to anomalous and suspicious activity connected to AI agents.
Agentic security operations centre
Google Cloud is advancing its approach to security operations through an 'agentic SOC' vision in Google Security Operations, which leverages AI agents to enhance efficiency and detection capabilities. By automating processes such as data pipeline optimisation, alert triage, investigation, and response, Google Cloud aims to address traditional gaps in detection engineering workflows. "We've introduced our vision of an agentic security operations center (SOC) that includes a system where agents can coordinate their actions to accomplish a shared goal. By offering proactive, agent-supported defense capabilities built on optimizing data pipelines, automating alert triage, investigation, and response, the agentic SOC can streamline detection engineering workflows to address coverage gaps and create new threat-led detections."
The new Alert Investigation agent, currently in preview, is capable of autonomously enriching events, analysing command-line interfaces, and building process trees. It produces recommendations for next steps and aims to reduce the manual effort and response times for security incidents.
Expert guidance and consulting
Google Cloud's Mandiant Consulting arm is extending its AI consulting services in response to demand for robust governance and security frameworks in AI deployments. These services address areas such as risk-based AI governance, pre-deployment environment hardening, and comprehensive threat modelling.
Mandiant Consulting experts noted, "As more organizations lean into using generative and agentic AI, we've seen a growing need for AI security consulting. Mandiant Consulting experts often encounter customer concerns for robust governance frameworks, comprehensive threat modeling, and effective detection and response mechanisms for AI applications, underscoring the importance of understanding risk through adversarial testing."
Clients working with Mandiant can access pre-deployment security assessments tailored to AI and benefit from continuous updates as threats evolve.
Unified platform enhancements
Google Unified Security, a platform integrating Google's security solutions, now features updates in Google Security Operations and Chrome Enterprise. Within Security Operations, the new SecOps Labs offers early access to AI-powered experiments related to parsing, detection, and response, many of which use Google Gemini technology. Dashboards with native security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR) data integration are now generally available, reflecting user feedback from previous previews.
On the endpoint side, Chrome Enterprise enhancements bring secured browsing to mobile, including Chrome on iOS, with features such as easy account separation and URL filtering. This allows companies to block access to unauthorised AI sites and provides enhanced reporting for investigation and compliance purposes.
Trusted Cloud and compliance
Recent updates in Trusted Cloud focus on compliance and data security. Compliance Manager, now in preview, enables unified policy configuration and extensive auditing within Google Cloud. Data Security Posture Management, also in preview, delivers governance for sensitive data and integrates natively with BigQuery Security Centre. The Security Command Centre's Risk Reports can now summarise unique cloud security risks to inform both security specialists and broader business stakeholders.
Updates in identity management include Agentic IAM, launching later in the year, which will facilitate agent identities across environments to simplify credential management and authorisation for both human and non-human agents. Additionally, the IAM role picker powered by Gemini, currently in preview, assists administrators in granting least-privileged access through natural language queries.
Enhanced Sensitive Data Protection now monitors assets in Vertex AI, BigQuery, and CloudSQL, with improvements in image inspection for sensitive data and additional context model detection.
Network security innovations announced include expanded tag support for Cloud NGFW, Zero Trust networking for RDMA networks in preview, and new controls for Cloud Armour, such as hierarchical security policies and content-based WAF inspection updates.
Commitment to responsible AI security
Jon Ramsey emphasised Google Cloud's aim to make security a business enabler: "The innovations we're sharing today at Google Cloud Security Summit 2025 demonstrate our commitment to making security an enabler of your business ambitions. By automating compliance, simplifying access management, and expanding data protection for your AI workloads, we're helping you enhance your security posture with greater speed and ease. Further, by using AI to empower your defenders and meticulously securing your AI projects from inception to deployment, Google Cloud provides the comprehensive foundation you need to thrive in this new era."
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