Data breaches don’t always start with hackers or sophisticated cyberattacks. Sometimes, they happen because of simple, everyday mistakes that we’ve all made—like sending an email to the wrong person.
Misdirected emails, often referred to as accidental data loss, happen when an employee inadvertently sends sensitive or confidential information to the wrong recipient.
Whether it’s picking the wrong contact from a dropdown, letting auto-complete fill in an address, or just a small typo, misdirected emails are a risk we all face in the workplace.
These little errors can quickly snowball into big problems, leading to accidental data breaches that expose sensitive information and disrupt business.
That’s why it’s so important to catch and prevent these slip-ups before they happen.
In this post, I’ll introduce an email verification tool designed to enhance misdirected email protection by prompting the sender to confirm recipients, attachments, and any sensitive content before sending, ensuring that confidential information isn’t mistakenly sent to the wrong person.
Understanding Misdirected Emails
According to Ponemon research, in 2022 alone, 65% of all data loss incidents occurred via email, and nearly two-thirds of organizations experienced data loss or exfiltration due to an employee mistake on email.
The Verizon Data Breach 2023 report found that human error played a role in 74% of all breaches.
If you think misdirected emails aren’t a serious security concern, think again.
The UK Ministry of Defense was fined €400,000 where details of 265 people compromised in email data breaches weeks after Taliban took control of Afghanistan in 2021.
Personal information relating to 245 people was inadvertently disclosed. The UK information commissioners stated that the email error could have resulted in a threat to life.
In another separate incident, The Central Young Men’s Christian Association in UK was fined €8700 for failing to implement sufficient technical and organisational measures to ensure information security.
The Central YMCA sent an email to individuals participating in a programme for people living with HIV using “CC” rather than “BCC”, revealing the email addresses to all recipients.
Simple email errors like this can result in severe financial penalties for the organisation.
Confidential information such as intellectual property, customer/consumer information, sensitive email content, social security numbers, credit card data, and other regulated information is at risk of being sent to unintended recipients by such simple email errors.
It is important to understand that It’s the people within your organization that can cause a data breach.
What are the consequences of a misdirected email?
If the email or attachment doesn’t contain sensitive data, the sender simply needs to be informed, apologize, and resend the email to the correct recipient.
However, email is often used to share sensitive information, such as client data, personal data of service users, or confidential project information. When such data is sent in a misdirected email, the consequences are often more serious.
Data privacy regulations are tightening. As illustrated by the examples above, the GDPR in Europe has established a high benchmark for safeguarding sensitive information in the digital era.
In the US, the CCPA, HIPAA and New York SHIELD Act requires businesses to implement reasonable data protection measures and notify individuals of breaches.
Each country has its own set of data privacy laws, such as Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), Brazil’s General Data Protection Law (LGPD), Singapore’s Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA), and Australia’s Privacy Act.
These regulations all require organizations to maintain stringent data protection standards, with non-compliance leading to significant fines.
Organizations will – in the long-term – also suffer from a damaged reputation. Today, data privacy is taken seriously, and not just by regulatory bodies. A data breach undermines the confidence that clients, shareholders, and partners have in an organization.
Learn More: The Biggest Consequences of Misdirected Emails
Use SendGuard for Misdirected Email Protection
The best way to avoid causing a data breach by emailing unintended recipients with confidential information is to always double-check your emails before sending.
However easy as this may sound in theory but it’s difficult to put that into practice in your everyday life.
You need an additional layer of security to prevent human-related errors and prevent careless email mistakes.
SendGuard for Outlook is a SaaS add-in for prompting users to approve or remove email recipients and attachments.
It stops your employees from sending emails to the wrong recipients, including client mix-ups and accidental auto-completes.
- Review Recipients
- Review Attachments
- (Optional) Encrypt the email
- Click Send (log details of email sent)
- External Domain are color-coded for easy Identification
- View/Open Attachment
- Sent Now or Delay (to allow Unsend/Recall)
- Brand with your logo, Customized wording and links to email policies
SendGuard even has built-in DLP rules to detect credit card numbers, social security numbers, patient health information (PHI) and personally identifiable information (PII).
Custom-made rules can also be implemented in SendGuard to suit your business requirements.
Thousands of people use SendGuard to ensure the security, confidentiality, and integrity of sensitive data in emails and achieve compliance with strict data privacy laws like GDPR, CCPA, HIPAA and other legislation aimed at protecting information.
Get your fully functional 30-day free trial or just contact our sales team on sales@standss.com with your request.
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