The white paper includes information about Google's security practices, policies and technology that support Google Apps, and attempts to counter the perception that Google's online services are less secure than traditional on-premises systems.
Yale University halted its move to Google's Gmail and Google Apps in March, citing security and privacy concerns.
But Eran Feigenbaum, director of security at Google's enterprise group, said in a blog post that the move is part of Google's move towards increased transparency.
"We are always improving and evolving the security of our systems, and we work every day to help protect against new threats", he wrote.
Feigenbaum highlighted some of the key points in the white paper:
- Google datacenters are protected by advanced physical security controls, and access to information is monitored at multiple levels.
- Google stores customer data in fragments across multiple servers and across multiple datacenters to both enhance reliability and provide greater security than can be achieved by storing all data on a single server.
- Google performs software patching rapidly across identical server stacks to help keep users updated with the latest patches.
- Administrators can set fine-grained access controls for documents, calendars, and other types of information commonly stored in the cloud.
- Operations at a vast scale can help detect security threats across the web early and prepare appropriate defenses.
- System redundancy involves data replication across disparate datacenters for availability and disaster recovery.
This story was first published by Computer Weekly