Chrome Enterprise Premium drives 50%+ projected cost reduction for Mercari

Editor's Note: Today's post is by Yu Susaki, Manager of Enterprise Security at Mercari, a leading consumer-to-consumer (C2C) marketplace with more than 20 million monthly active users. Mercari selected Chrome Enterprise Premium and Chromebooks to secure its highly sensitive customer service (CS) environment. Handling personally identifiable information (PII) on a daily basis, Mercari required a security strategy that could protect its data while addressing the operational inefficiencies and high costs of its legacy Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI). With a customer service environment largely driven by strategic partners, Mercari needed a scalable solution to empower agents to work securely and seamlessly while implementing safeguards to protect against data loss. Flexibility and security with one secure enterprise browser Previously, our customer service environment relied on a mix of legacy devices routed through VDI. This created operational friction, a frustrating user experience, increased IT overhead, and required managing overlapping DLP controls on both the VDI and local environments to prevent potential data transfer between the two. To simplify our architecture, we decided to shift focus from OS-level isolation to browser-layer data control, introducing Chrome Enterprise Premium and Chromebooks to a partner environment to establish data control and boundaries based on user actions. By leveraging Chrome Enterprise Premium, our team configured strict DLP rules, implementing controls to restrict users from pasting or uploading files to destinations outside of Mercari's approved business tools. This helps protect sensitive company data from being leaked or fed into unapproved channels. We knew investing in Chrome Enterprise Premium would help enable AI-powered productivity while restricting data leaks to unsanctioned AI tools. The transition was smooth because our workforce was already using the Chrome Enterprise browser across the company prior to the security upgrade. Because employees were able to continue using the browser interface they were already accustomed to, the implementation of the new security solution was easier and resulted in strong user adoption. By implementing these policy controls, we could confidently adopt new AI capabilities while ensuring enterprise data boundaries are strictly enforced. Beyond DLP, transitioning to this new architecture dramatically streamlined IT operations and reduced costs. With zero-touch enrollment, IT no longer needs to manually set up individual devices before handing them to users. Furthermore, by reducing dependency on VDI and consolidating various security agents (like legacy DLP, MDM, and EDR), we project a cost reduction of more than 50% over a three-year period within this environment, covering device costs, VDI running costs, and security licenses. Additionally, this browser-centric model eliminates the heavy operational overhead and specialized engineering resources traditionally required just to maintain a complex VDI infrastructure, allowing us to redirect valuable IT talent to higher-priority initiatives. Implementing Chrome Enterprise Premium and ChromeOS enabled a zero-trust, device-based approach that protects data, slashes IT costs, and measurably improves security. We eliminated VDI friction, lowered costs, and strictly enforced data boundaries—ultimately making Chrome Enterprise Premium the right move to deeply protect our marketplace and users. Looking ahead, we are set up as an AI-forward organization that wants its employees to benefit from new technologies, like agentic browsers, but in a highly controlled environment. To achieve this, we leveraged the power of Chrome Enterprise Premium. As a first step, we are using browser policies to enable a safe, read-only adoption of Gemini in Chrome. Employees can now leverage multi-page context and seamless side-panel interactions without manual copy-pasting, which drastically reduces the risk of unintended actions like data modification. Looking forward, we plan to continuously explore the optimal balance between AI productivity and security. By dynamically utilizing both existing and upcoming enterprise security features alongside Chrome Enterprise Premium’s robust DLP, we will ensure data boundaries evolve proactively, empowering our workforce to innovate safely.

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