What is GAT Shield? #
GAT Shield is one of GAT Labs’ family of tools — It’s an audit, reporting, and security Chrome Extension for your Google Workspace environment.
GAT Shield helps admins protect their Google Workspace users by monitoring all activity and providing real-time DLP on ALL sites.
GAT Shield consists of two parts: the Shield Reporter Web Application and the Shield Chrome Extension (clients).
When the extension is installed, it watches in real time, receives instructions from the reporter, and sends data and alerts back to the reporter in milliseconds.
**Availability: GAT Shield is enabled for trial.
Can be part of different plans
- Manage – for Education
- Vigilant – for Education
- Vigilant Plus – for Education
- Secure – for Enterprise.
**Prerequisite: GAT Shield requires GAT+ to be installed on the domain. The Super Admin must deploy the extension to the end-users.
(See our resource How to deploy and configure GAT Shield on Your Domain for more information)
Non-Google Admin User #
GAT Shield can be delegated to non-admin users, allowing them to run audits, analyses, or reports for any given scope, such as user, group, or Organization Unit (OU).
(See our resource GAT Shield: Delegated Auditors Functionality for more information)
How does GAT Shield work? #
GAT Shield is a Chrome extension that your organization’s IT admin installs on your Chrome browser. It keeps an eye on your browsing activity whenever you’re signed into Chrome with your work or school account.
GAT Shield Dashboard Overview #
Once launched, the tool will display a dashboard with a section for navigation on the left side panel.
*Note: Filters are a powerful feature developed throughout the dashboard to help users find the right data for every use case faster.
A view summarising shield activity for users and alerts:
Dashboard #
The dashboard will show the user activity in a dashboard view. View the alerts triggered by the users in the selected time frame. View and select Time for the dashboard view. Filter for Domain users, Org. Unit of Users as well as Group of Users.
View the graph for different types of user activity and different alerts.
- Active users
- Alerts
- Downloads
- Downloads size
- Extension installs
- Extension removals
- Internal chats
- External chats
- Website visits
- Time on websites
View the list of top charts activity.
- Top Categories being blocked
- Top Categories being warned
- Top Extensions by Install
- Top Extensions by Removal
- Top Shield Alerts by Executions
- Top Sites by Site Views
- Top Sites by Time on Sites
- Top Users being blocked
- Top Users being warned
- Top Users by Downloads
- Top Users by Downloads Size
- Top Users by Extension Installs
- Top Users by Extension Removals
- Top Users by External Chat
- Top Users by Internal Chat
- Top Users by Shield Alerts
- Top Users by Site Views
- Top Users by Time on Sites
My Domain #
My domain shows a list of Users, Groups, and Classrooms. Each list show list of users and detailed information for them. Filters can be applied to search for specific user, group or classroom of users.
Reporting #
The Reporting section provides the reporting capability of the Shield extension.
User summary #
The user summary provides a chart view and tables where to filter by scope of users and time frame for which data can be presented. The Admins can filter for scope of users, group of users or org. unit of users. Select time frame for which data to be displayed.
View total users’ time on sites, list of top users in terms of time spent, as well as list of top sites browsed by users, and time spent on each site collectively.
User/Device activity #
User device activity measures the browsing activity for the selected users in the chosen time. View a chart for all pages visited by the selected user and total time spent, or time spent on individual webpages.
The detailed information shows a graph view of the time spent and the date for each webpage visit.
Chrome Device Summary #
The Chrome device summary shows a chart view for the browsing activity on the devices in the selected time frame. View total number of devices as well as site number and tital time spent over the chosen time frame.
View the total device time on sites ,as well asthe Top devices and Top users on devices. Top sites browsed on devices and Devices time on sites, all of this for the scope of devices and time frame picked.
User Geo Report #
This shows a Map with locations pointed to users’ activity. You can filter for a date and time as well as the scope of users you want to audit.
My scheduled reports #
This shows a list of all scheduled reports created by the Admin themselves.
All scheduled reports #
This shows all the scheduled reports of GAT Shield created by any of the Super Admins
Audit #
The Audit section provides the audit of the browsing activity of the Shield users.
Browsing #
Browsing shows the full browsing activity of the domain users. View the Top browsed domains in a pie chart view. Average time on websites, as well as top user by time on sites, and a pie chart or table list of the top users.
View all the users and the browsing activity done by them, such as the websites they visited for how long and website domains, and the times of start and finish of the browsing, all in the selected time frame chosen.
Cookies #
View all the cookies used by users.
Downloads #
View the downloads done on the Chrome browser in the chosen time frame. View and filter for any user and download details information.
Extensions #
View all the extensions that the users of the domain are using, along with their details.
Extension events #
View the events for the users and the extensions they use. Filter by the Event type of Enabled, Disabled, Removed, or Installed
Searches #
View all the searches done by the users on the selected date. You can view the User and the Query they applied, as well as what Search engine they used, as well as the date extension version and Chrome version.
Chats #
View the Google chat information, who is chatting with whom, view the participants and the duration of the chat when it started and finished, and more information. You can also filter by time for this data. The data can also be set up as a scheduled report.
User/Device Geo Reporting #
Preview on Map – Preview the current records shown in the table on the Map
View a list of users and the networking information for each user, such as IP addresses, devices used, Country or City the user logged in from.
Login Control Events #
This show a list of events for Login control feature of GAT Shield. It provides a list of users who broken the rule of Login control and addtional information.
Site Access Control #
Site Access Control is the web filtering of GAT Shield. This allows you to apply block rules for the users of the domain, thus blocking webpages for the users.
User defined categories #
Here you can create a list that acts as a category of sites to be blocked. Create a category via list, spreadhseet, websearch or recent browsing. Once the list of pages to be blocked is created can it be activated and applied for any or all users of the domain.
Predefined categories #
List of predefined categories of sites that can be blocked for all users in bulk. Select any of the categories and simply enable it for a set of users.
There are some special categories that can also be applied.
- All – All URLs are blocked when a Block Rule is created using this category.
- Public or Private IP addresses
- Google Translate block – All translate.goog subdomains are used by Google Translate to translate whole pages.
Rules #
Here you can test rules and view if the rule is applied to any user. Allow/Block websites is a quick way to block or allow any webpage for any of your users
View all the rules that are created, you can view if they are currently active or not, and what category they are part of, as well as their name, and what action is enabled to block or allow pages.
Block Partial content on Pages #
Apply a block to partial content on webpages.
For example
- Google Translate widget on Google search
- Block the comments section on YouTube
- Remove the related videos sidebar on YouTube
- Block games embedded into Google Search
Events #
View all the different events that are triggered by the Site Access Control. View the list of users who broke applied rules. Filter by a date format.
Block page configuration #
- Visibility of the name of the rule (that blocked the page) on the blocking page
- A message that would be shown to the user while blocking the page on the device.
Alerts #
Alerts allow the Admins to create real-time alerts for the end-users. There are many types of alerts that can be set up.
Rules #
There are different rules that can be set up for the users.
- Device
- Device user/owner mismatch
- Download
- Page content inspection
- IP address
- Location
- Search
- Upload
- Visit
Each alert works differently and reports different types of user activity.
Notifications #
This will show the result from all the Alert rules that are set up in GAT Shield.
Commands #
Commands can be set up, and messages and commands pushed to the end-users.
Defined commands #
This site allows you to define commands that will be sent to users’ extensions.