Google Workspace vs. Microsoft 365: What Financial Services Firms Should Consider

Financial services firms face unique pressures when choosing a productivity and collaboration platform. Beyond day-to-day usability, your choice must support stringent regulatory expectations, reduce operational risk, streamline compliance workflows, and enable long-term scalability.

Two leading platforms dominate this decision: Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 (M365). Both platforms deliver secure, cloud-native productivity environments, but each offer distinct advantages depending on your organization’s size, operational model, regulatory exposure, and technology strategy.

Business Functionality

Both Google Workspace and M365 offer competitive pricing with entry tiers starting around $6 per user per month, with scaling costs as functionality increases. The best fit depends largely on how your firm collaborates and what tools your workflows rely on.

Google Workspace

• Purpose-built for real-time collaboration.
• Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides are great for team co-authoring and lightweight workflows.
• Clean, intuitive UI; often preferred by teams that value simplicity and speed.
• Google Meet for video conferencing.
• Integrates well with cloud-native tools and lightweight web applications.

Microsoft 365

• Provides a rich, widely adopted productivity suite (Word, Excel, PowerPoint).
• Strong fit for firms that regularly exchange documents with custodians, fund administrators, clients, or partners who expect Microsoft formats.
• Teams offers unified messaging, conferencing, and optional enterprise-grade telephony.
• Automation capabilities through PowerApps and Power Automate.
• Copilot integrates deeply with Office apps and organizational data.

Takeaway: Both platforms support modern collaboration. Google Workspace excels in simplicity and real-time editing, while Microsoft shines in document-heavy workflows, complex spreadsheets, automation, and communication unification. Thrive helps organizations map these features to their business operating model.
Security

Financial services firms must implement strong encryption, access controls, threat protection, and incident response processes. Both Google and Microsoft provide secure baselines, but they differ in maturity, granularity, and ecosystem depth.

Google Workspace Security Highlights

• Strong encryption at rest and in transit.
• Straightforward administrative interface.
• Effective built-in protections against phishing and malware.
• Enterprise-tier MDM capabilities.
• Ideal for firms favoring simplicity and minimal overhead.

Microsoft 365 Security Highlights

• Encryption standards that match Google’s for both data at rest and in transit.
• More granular identity and access controls through Entra ID and Conditional Access policies.
• Deep integration with Microsoft Defender for EDR and XDR.
• Advanced SIEM capabilities through Sentinel.
• Stronger device management through Intune (MDM + MAM).

Takeaway: Both platforms provide secure environments that can meet financial services expectations. Google prioritizes streamlined, intuitive security management; Microsoft provides more customizable controls for firms that need granular policies or are scaling rapidly. Thrive ensures that either environment is configured to meet compliance expectations, not just vendor defaults.

Compliance

Regulated financial firms must address requirements such as:

• SEC and FINRA books and records
• Regulation S-P data protection and breach notification
• Marketing Rule compliance
• Business continuity and disaster recovery
• Communications archiving
• Access governance and privilege management

Neither platform alone guarantees compliance – controls, configuration, and workflow design matter most. But they offer different strengths.

Google Workspace Compliance Strengths

Supports integrations with leading compliance archiving platforms like Global Relay and Smarsh.

• Offers 17a-4 compliant retention capabilities.
• Provides data protection and DLP features, especially at higher tiers.
• Microsoft 365 Compliance Strengths
• Includes Microsoft Purview for advanced governance, classification, labeling, and auditing.
• Supports third-party archiving solutions with mature connectors.
• Offers complete visibility into data access patterns, which can be helpful for demonstrating compliance during exams.

Takeaway: Both platforms can be made fully compliant, but neither is compliant “out of the box.” The difference lies in their governance tooling and the level of insight needed for audits, reporting, and incident response. Thrive helps firms implement the right guardrails, regardless of the selected platform t.

Business Continuity & Global Footprint

Both Google and Microsoft operate on highly resilient cloud infrastructures with strong uptime SLAs.
Google Workspace emphasizes simplicity, fast recovery times, and strong backup ecosystem integrations.
Microsoft 365 offers advanced multi-geo capabilities and active-active configurations suitable for firms operating across regions.

For either platform, Thrive typically recommends off-platform backups to strengthen redundancy and improve recovery scenarios.

How Thrive Helps Financial Services Organizations

1. Strategic Platform Evaluation
We assess your workflows, regulatory obligations, risk profile, collaboration patterns, document management needs, and growth plans to determine whether Google or Microsoft is the better long-term fit.

2. Secure Implementation & Migration
Whether moving to Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, Thrive ensures:

• Identity and access controls are designed to support Zero Trust.
• MFA, Conditional Access (where applicable), and role-based access are enforced.
• Tenant configuration aligns with financial-sector expectations, not out-of-the-box defaults.

3. Compliance-Ready Architecture
We help implement:

• Books and records retention (via native tools or third parties like Smarsh/Global Relay)
• 17a-4 compliant storage setups
• Data governance policies
• Email and messaging archiving
• Backup policies that meet regulatory expectations

4. Security Hardening & Threat Detection
Thrive optimizes native Microsoft or Google security capabilities and integrates them with:

• Security operations
• Threat detection and analytics
• Incident response workflows
• Device management strategies

5. Ongoing Support & Optimization
The platform choice is only the beginning. Thrive supports your team with:

• 24x7x365 monitoring and management
• Continuous compliance alignment
• Regular configuration reviews
• Guidance as regulations evolve

Both Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 are viable platforms for financial services firms. The “better” choice depends on your organization’s structure, client base, regulatory obligations, preferred workflows, and long-term technology strategy.

The most important differentiator isn’t the platform, it’s how well it’s architected, secured, and governed. Contact Thrive today to learn more about how we can help you choose the right platform for your business needs.