Posted by Alex Vogenthaler, Group Product Manager, Google Drive

(Cross-posted on the Google Drive Blog.)

When you store your important files somewhere, you want to have peace of mind that they'll be safe and easy-to-access later. That's why everything in Drive is always encrypted. And why we encourage all of our users to complete a simple Security Checkup every now and then. Of course, this should include file sharing as well -- it should be super easy to control who sees what.

With this in mind, we're making a number of improvements to Drive today, so you can store your photos and documents safely and get them where they need to go.

Get sharing notifications
You may have noticed recently that it’s easier to select and share multiple files and folders on iOS and Android — but checking your email may not be the fastest way to find out when something’s been shared with you. So starting today, you’ll receive mobile notifications to alert you immediately when files or folders are shared with you and a single tap can take you right to them.

Request and grant file access
Drive lets you quickly grab a link to files and folders so you can share them using other apps, but if you share a link before you’ve granted access, the person you’re sending it to won’t be able to open it. Now, the Drive for Android app lets recipients request access with a single tap. And on Android and iOS, file owners will be notified of the request instantly so they can quickly grant access.

Preview files without a Google Account on Android
Until now, you needed a Google Account to view shared files on your Android device. Now, you can do this without a Google Account just like on the web.

Some of the features mentioned are already available. Look for the rest to roll out in the coming week or so.

Posted by Stafford Marquardt, Product Manager, Google My Maps

Whether you’re planning your next event, mapping out the best route to visit clients, or sharing the location of your food truck with fans, Google My Maps makes it easy to put your world on a custom map. Starting today, you can access My Maps right from Google Drive on your Google Apps account, so it’s even easier to create, find and share your custom maps. Here are some examples:

Jessica owns a food truck and every Thursday she decides her location based on fan votes. She creates a Google Form and posts it online, gathers votes and can lay them all out on one map to find the most popular location.

Shannon is gearing up for her company’s annual conference. This year, with the help of Google Apps Script, she created a Drive folder for each attendee with their tickets, event information and a custom map with event details and their hotel.

Martin is the delivery coordinator for a multi-chain electronics store. He creates My Maps laying out the most efficient routes for all the deliveries. He drops each map into his team’s shared Drive folder, so each driver can access everything they need, from maps to delivery lists, all in one place. Once Martin assigns routes, drivers can use any device to simply search the folder for the right map.

My Maps is also helpful in the classroom to teach kids about explorers like Lewis and Clark, and to plan out your weekend hike. Whatever your needs, Google My Maps—now accessible in Google Drive—makes getting things done that much easier.

Posted by: Scott Johnston, Director of Product Management, Google Drive

Since we launched Drive for Work 9 months ago, we've watched as more and more businesses moved to the cloud — and seen that they prioritize data security as much as we do. Security ranks at the top of the list of concerns that companies have about moving to the cloud, which is why we’ve put security front and center in our products from the beginning. And to keep your company’s data even more secure in Drive, we’re launching new sharing controls, alerts and audit events to Google Drive for Work and Google for Education over the next several weeks.

For Google Drive for Work customers:

Set sharing settings by department
Sometimes different file settings make sense. You might, for example, have a research department that needs to keep information confidential and a sales team that needs to share presentations with their clients. To help manage these different sharing needs, now when you make selections in Drive settings from the Admin console, you can turn off sharing outside the domain for one organizational unit, while still allowing others to work and share files with anyone they need to.

Create custom Drive alerts and track more events with Drive audit

To keep track of when specific actions are taken in Drive, you can set up custom Drive alerts. So if you want to know when a file containing the word “confidential” in the title is shared outside the company, now you’ll know. And there are more events coming to Drive audit, including download, print and preview.

For all Google Apps for Work customers:

Set up custom admin alerts to find out when things change

There are lots of moving parts to running a company, and now it’s easier for IT to find out about the things they care about with custom alerts — like when a new app is installed or a shared calendar is deleted — and get those right in their inbox.

Let people reset their own passwords
Recovering passwords isn’t the most pleasant thing we do in our lives. But now IT can let employees securely reset their own passwords, so they don’t lose valuable time being locked out of their account. If this doesn’t make sense for your organization, admins can simply turn this ability off.

Available for all to use:

Disable downloading, printing and copying of any file with IRM
With Information Rights Management (“IRM”) you can disable downloading, printing and copying from the advanced sharing menu – perfect for when the file you’re sharing is only meant for a few select people. This new option is available for any file stored in Google Drive, including documents, spreadsheets and presentations created in Google Docs.

Share quickly with anyone outside your organization
When it comes to sharing, like giving final inventory lists to your caterer or last minute logos to your design agency, you want to make sure people can see it right away — whether they use Drive or not. Now, you can share with any email address and they’ll be able to view the files you share —without having to sign-in to a Google account. Admins can disable this feature for certain departments that want to require sign-in before , while enabling it for others.

All the above are rolling out over the next month.

Stay tuned for more
We’re also working on the ability to establish trusted domains, so businesses and schools that have multiple Google Apps domains or want to work with trusted partners or customers, can select multiple Google Apps domains that are OK to share with from Drive and Classroom. And on expiring access, because occasionally you only want to share files for a temporary amount of time. With expiring access you can set a future date when access will be removed. Stay tuned, there's more to come from Drive and Drive for Work.