By Sara Castellanos

Google Cloud is racing to roll out new features and services aimed at helping its enterprise customers maintain business continuity during the coronavirus pandemic, including a new security product expected to launch Tuesday, said Thomas Kurian, chief executive of the Google LLC unit.

"Every week, there's a new set of dimensions, and we have to adapt, keep people positive, and focus through it," said Mr. Kurian.

The new security product includes technology that could entice more businesses, especially those in highly regulated industries, to adopt cloud services during the pandemic. The confidential computing technology encrypts data while it is being processed; previously, data was encrypted in storage and in transit. "We wanted people comfortable [in knowing] they can move to the cloud and don't have to worry about the security of [their] data," Mr. Kurian said.

Google Cloud and Google are part of Alphabet Inc.

The technology will be initially available in parts of Asia, Europe and the U.S. Pricing varies per company depending on the use case.

Cloud-service providers, which sell computing capacity on an as-needed basis, emerged as among the few corporate winners in the early days of the pandemic, owing to their ability to support remote work, among other capabilities.

Google Cloud accelerated the deployment of several features for its virtual meeting product, Google Meet, in April, including one that automatically filters out background noises such as keystrokes and dog barks. Another feature automatically adjusts a user's video to account for lighting variations. Google Meet was made available free of charge in April as a consumer product; previously it was available on a subscription basis to enterprise customers through G Suite.

In 2018, the company launched an artificial intelligence tool for manufacturers that automatically inspects products for quality, which Mr. Kurian said could be useful during the pandemic. The computer vision tool, built with SAP SE, lets manufacturers circumvent manual inspections, which often require workers to be physically close together and more susceptible to contracting the virus, Mr. Kurian said.

During the early months of the pandemic, Mr. Kurian said his role was partly focused on preparing the company for extended remote work scenarios. Employees in certain offices around the world began working remotely in February, weeks ahead of many customers. "We wanted to test what it would be like," Mr. Kurian said.

That meant employees weren't transitioning to remote work while customers needed help overcoming their own information technology challenges, Mr. Kurian said. Google Cloud's customer support staff, for example, was already working remotely while handling queries related to scaling up online learning platforms and helping government customers set up virtual meetings, he said.

Google Cloud also benefited from existing protocols for Black Friday, when retailers' websites see a rush of online shoppers, to deal with surges in demand for cloud services, Mr. Kurian said. During the early months of the pandemic, staff mobilized to help customers provision cloud services, plan for cloud computing capacity and monitor for IT system outages, Mr. Kurian said.

That protocol benefited customers in online videogaming, government services, education and retail, who needed assistance in ramping up computing capacity, he said.

Seemantini Godbole, chief information officer for home improvement company Lowe's Cos., worked with Mr. Kurian and his team in March and April to manage increased e-commerce demands. Lowe's customers were doubling down on projects such as those related to home offices and backyards during those months, and Lowe's saw "tremendous" demand," Ms. Godbole said.

The company used Google Cloud services to rapidly scale the user interface for a curbside pick-up app that was originally planned for later this year or early next. The app was deployed in April and lets customers pick up their purchases in front of the store if they choose, Ms. Godbole said. Lowe's has been using Google Cloud services for about two years, she said.

Google Cloud's world-wide market share in the cloud was 4% as of 2018, according to the most recent data from technology research firm Gartner Inc., trailing behind Amazon.com Inc.'s Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Corp. and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. AWS's cloud services market share was about 48%, Microsoft Corp.'s was 15.5% and Alibaba's was 7.7%. During the pandemic, its virtual meeting product is facing competition from cloud rivals and companies such as Zoom Video Communications Inc., which offer similar products.

Mr. Kurian's focus since he joined the company from Oracle Corp. in 2018 has been on delivering growth to parent Alphabet and developing services, including those using artificial intelligence, that provide business value to chief information officers.

The coronavirus pandemic presented a new opportunity for Google Cloud to prove its value and commitment to customers, said Daryl Plummer, chief of research for cloud computing at Gartner.

Google Cloud aims to differentiate itself by being known as a provider who can handle unpredictable scenarios such as Covid-19, Mr. Plummer said. It aims to do that by offering secure remote-work tools and software development tools that require minimal coding.

Working closer with customers on rapidly provisioning computing resources to help them cope with the pandemic is also a key part of its strategy, Mr. Plummer said. "Trust is built in times of crisis," he said.

Write to Sara Castellanos at sara.castellanos@wsj.com