Virtru Encryption for Drive

Virtru for Gmail and Google Drive provide encryption above and beyond what Google natively provides. Virtru is Google’s leading partner in encryption services that integrate with Google Workspace. Virtru encrypted Gmail makes sending and receiving sensitive information more secure without adding unnecessary complexity.

What You Need to Know

Many departments need to share sensitive and sometimes protected/classified information. In the past this has often been done through faxing, a solution many of these departments wanted to move away from. IT determined that email encryption meets the security requirements these departments have while providing the greatest ease of use and flexibility to our faculty and staff.

Virtru does not, and should not, replace purpose-built health, student record, or other secure data management systems. Virtru encrypted email supplements those tools and will allow faculty and staff to securely send information to outside agencies and communicate with students when MySJSU messaging, EHR (Electronic Health Record), and other dedicated systems don’t meet their needs.

Who Has Access

  • Staff
  • Faculty

How to Access Virtru for Drive

Creating Google Client Side Encryption Content

  • Open your drive.
  • Pick the item you want to create/upload
  • click the ">" to the right of the item type and then pick the "encrypted" option in the sub-menu

Selecting the Blank Encrypted document option in Google Drive with Virtru installed.

And here's how you know a document is encrypted.

A Google Doc with the encryption mark.

Storing Level 1 Data in Google Drive with Virtru

Virtru for Drive allows you to encrypt files you upload to drive (e.g., PDF files, docx files, xlsx files, zip files, etc.). If you wish to upload a file that contains Level 1 data, you can use Virtru to encrypt the uploaded file.

Virtru for Drive adds two Secure upload buttons to Google Drive. You can choose to upload and encrypt an individual file, or create a folder that will store all uploaded files encrypted.

Google Drive with the option to either Secure File Upload or create a Secure Folder.

Important Note: Virtru for Drive does not support the encryption of Google’s productivity apps (e.g., Google Docs word processing, Google Sheets, or Google Slides).

Typical Use Cases for Virtru for Google Drive

  • Sending sensitive and protected information to SJSU students, faculty and staff (only faculty and staff can initiate an encrypted conversation)
  • Sending reports and data including sensitive and protected information to individuals outside SJSU
  • Max of 150MB (6x  than the Gmail message size limit)
  • Recipient is not required to be a Virtru user

Product Features not Supported

Virtru for Drive does not automatically encrypt a file in Google Drive/Shared Drives.

Additional Resources

Support

For Virtru Encryption support, submit a help ticket.