One of the biggest problems that businesses are facing is the detection and prevention of sensitive and confidential data loss through misdirected emails.
Email data loss prevention is an important part of your email security defense to avoid any catastrophic exposure of your firm’s most confidential information.
Data breaches caused by misdirected emails can be costly to your business in financial terms and also result in loss of reputation and trust.
Organizations need an Email DLP solution that reduces email threats borne from human error and ensures that your organization can meet all it’s requirements for email compliance.
Having an Email DLP solution helps your business meet it’s regulatory requirements for GDPR, HIPAA, CCPA, FINRA and other national and global information security regulations.
It helps you to protect sensitive data including personally identifiable information (PII), protected health information (PHI), intellectual property (IP) payment card information (PCI), confidential research, sensitive corporate information and any other data important to your company from being emailed to unintended recipient(s).
What data is at risk from being lost from Misdirected Emails?
Email is one of the riskiest channel for data loss in your organization. Misdirected emails can put various types of data at risk of being lost or exposed to unintended recipients.
The specific types of data that are at risk may vary depending on the content of the email and the context in which it was sent. Here are some examples of data that may be at risk of being lost in misdirected emails:
Personal information: Misdirected emails may contain personal information such as names, addresses, phone numbers, credit card numbers, social security numbers, bank account number, and email addresses. This information can be used by cybercriminals to conduct phishing attacks or identity theft.
Confidential corporate information: Sensitive business information such as financial information, trade secrets, and intellectual property is at risk from being lost through misaddressed emails. Competitors can use this information to gain competitive advantage or this information can be sold on the black market.
Protected health information: Misdirected emails that contain protected health information (PHI) can put an individual’s health information at risk. This information is protected by regulations such as HIPAA, and unauthorized disclosure can result in legal and financial consequences.
Legal documents: Emails that contain legal documents, contracts, or other legally binding agreements can put individuals or organizations at risk of legal liabilities if the information falls into the wrong hands.
Passwords and login credentials: Misdirected emails that contain passwords, login credentials, or other authentication information can put individuals and organizations at risk of hacking, unauthorized access, or data breaches.
Misdirected emails can put various types of data at risk, including personal information, sensitive business information, protected health information, legal documents, and passwords and login credentials. Basically, any information you want to keep secure and confidential is at risk from misdirected emails.
How to prevent Email Data Loss?
There are many ways you can use to prevent email data loss through misdirected emails.
Double-check your emails: Before sending an email, double-check the email addresses of the recipients to ensure that you are sending the email to the intended recipient(s).
One of the key causes of misdirected emails is the auto-complete feature. Avoid relying on auto-complete or auto-fill functions, especially when sending emails to new or unfamiliar recipients. One way to reduce auto-complete errors is to delete inappropriate suggestions so that they no longer appear. This tactic is useful if someone’s email address is suggested to you whom you may have contacted only once.
Use delay sending feature: Using the delay sending feature allows you to set a delay period between the time you hit “Send” and the time the email is actually sent. The email is stored in your Outbox, and this gives you a window of time to catch and correct any mistakes you may have made before the email is actually sent.
Educate employees: Educate employees on the importance of double-checking email addresses and using the delay-sending feature. However, busy employees seldom double-check emails before sending them.
Industry research shows that majority of the IT leaders are concerned that the majority of the employees do not understand the confidentiality of the information they share through emails.
Use email data loss prevention tools: Use data loss prevention tools that can scan outgoing emails for sensitive or confidential information, such as personal data, intellectual property, or financial information, and alert you if you are about to send an email to the wrong person or group.
Does your company need an Email DLP solution?
It’s important to safeguard your organization’s most sensitive and proprietary information from being lost through misdirected emails.
Emails mistakes are a real threat to your business.
It’s not sufficient to educate your employees on email security best practices when human error is the main cause of the data breach.
Email data loss prevention (DLP) solutions are becoming increasingly important as businesses and individuals rely more and more on email as a primary mode of communication. They add the extra layer of required protection.
SendGuard for Outlook is an email protection solution that offers email data loss prevention facility that integrates seamlessly with Microsoft Outlook to detect sensitive data and confidential information in emails.
SendGuard let’s you double check your emails before you send them out and it can even delay your messages as well. The delay guard feature of SendGuard lets you delay your messages for a preset amount of time. There’s no time limitation unlike Outlook’s built-in feature of delaying emails which only allows you to delay messages up to 2 hours.
SendGuard helps you to:
Protect confidential information: Email is often used to share sensitive and confidential information, such as financial data, personal information, and intellectual property. Email DLP solutions like SendGuard can help prevent this information from falling into the wrong hands by detecting and preventing unauthorized access, sharing, and forwarding of sensitive information.
Meet Compliance: Many industries, such as healthcare, education, legal and finance, are subject to strict regulations around the protection of sensitive information. SendGuard ensures that your business is meeting these requirements by detecting and preventing the transmission of regulated data.
Maintain your Corporate Reputation: A data breach or loss of sensitive information can have serious consequences for your business’s reputation. You can protect your organization’s brand and reputation by preventing data leaks and ensuring that sensitive information is kept secure by using SendGuard.
Avoid Legal and financial risks: Data breaches can result in significant legal and financial consequences for businesses. SendGuard helps mitigate these risks by preventing data loss and ensuring compliance with regulations.
You can create custom rules using SendGuard DLP to identify data that is unique to your business. SendGuard scans your email body text, subject, attachments, HTML files and compares this against policies that identify text patterns and strings to detect potential data leaks. When any rule is triggered, administrators may choose to either block, get the sender to send the email or get the sender to review the email.
You can download a fully functional 30-day trial to see how SendGuard can enhance your email information security.
No credit card required.
To learn more about SendGuard’s email data loss prevention technology contact our sales team on sales@standss.com.
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