Google Cloud session management provides flexible options for setting up session controls based on your organization’s security policy needs. To help you improve your security posture and mitigate credential theft and account takeover (ATO) risks, we have rolled out a 16-hour default session length for Google Cloud customers.

We’ve now completed extending this security standard to all customers who had not already self-configured session lengths, but today’s cloud environments require even more precision. As we conclude this global rollout, we have also evolved Google Cloud session controls from a broad administrative setting into a deeply integrated, granular feature of Context-Aware Access (CAA).

This update gives administrators more flexibility, better automation, and a more natural security workflow.

What’s new in Session Controls

1. Automation-first: Terraform, gcloud, and API support
Modern infrastructure is managed as code. To support DevSecOps workflows, the Session Controls policy configuration is no longer limited to manual UI configuration. Now generally available, you can define, deploy, and manage your session policies programmatically using:

• Terraform: Integrates session controls directly into your infrastructure manifests.

• gcloud CLI: Manages policies from the command line.

• REST APIs: Automate policy enforcement across complex multi-tenant environments.

2. Granular targeting with Google Groups
One of the most requested upgrades has been the capability to target policies with precision. Previously, session lengths were tied to organizational units (OUs). Now generally available, the Session Controls policy uses Google Groups.

This shift allows you to apply distinct session policies to specific clusters of users — such as requiring a two-hour session for users with elevated privileges (such as billing administrators and project owners) while maintaining a standard 16-hour session for general developers — regardless of where those users sit in your organizational hierarchy.

3. Precision application controls
Instead of a blanket policy that affects every application requiring Google Cloud API scopes, Session Controls policy allows you to configure session controls to specific applications. These applications include:

• The Google Cloud Console

• The gcloud command-line tool

• Specific OAuth applications

Now generally available, this update can help prevent all-or-nothing scenarios where a strict policy on the Cloud SDK might inadvertently disrupt legitimate business intelligence or dashboarding integrations that rely on OAuth.

4. Google Cloud-native experience
Historically, configuring session lengths for Google Cloud could only be done in the Google Workspace administrator console. 

Google Cloud customers can also sign up to use the Google Cloud Console to manage session policies alongside other access levels and security bindings in Access Context Manager (ACM). Available in preview, this update can help give Google Cloud administrators who prefer using the Google Console for policy administration tasks greater flexibility and a unified experience for configuring all their CAA policies. 

How to get started

By evolving session controls from static organizational defaults into dynamic, context-aware policies, your security teams can enforce tighter reauthentication boundaries against credential theft where risks are highest, without disrupting developer velocity.

Get started with the session controls documentation for instructions on how to use Terraform, REST API, and gCloud to configure session controls.