Many businesses rely on email to communicate with their employees, but this can be a potentially hazardous place for sensitive data. That is why DLP software is essential and should form part of any enterprise security strategy.
Traditional data loss prevention (DLP) relies on rules-based technology and static policies, but this method may miss legitimate activity that poses risks to your organization.
1. Prevent Unauthorized Access to Sensitive Data
Unauthorized access to sensitive data poses one of the greatest threats for any company, potentially leading to costly fines and a damaged reputation.
That is why email dlp is essential. This solution ensures users do not send sensitive data outside your network without authorization.
You can set a notification template to be sent when an email message violates your DLP policy. This notification can be sent directly to the sender or another address, such as a manager or DLP Compliance officer.
Intelligent email DLP stands in contrast to static DLP, using contextual machine learning techniques to detect when sensitive data is being shared. This helps prevent errors and malicious intent from taking place as well as safeguarding against data loss.
2. Prevent Insider Threats
Employees can cause significant harm to your business by violating company policies regarding data sharing. Examples include accidentally sending an email to the wrong recipient, disabling security controls without authorization, and more.
There is also the risk that employees could accidentally disclose valuable IP, personal information, or market-sensitive data to competitors, journalists, and others. Such threats carry legal repercussions.
The issue with most rule-based DLP solutions is they often miss important data contained in encrypted emails and attachments, falsely flagging them as malicious. This results in a waste of user time and resources as well as irreparable harm to your organization’s culture.
Smart Data Loss Prevention tools can help reduce these risks by automatically encrypting, blocking or quarantining outbound emails that contain sensitive data. They also prevent employees from sending unauthorized emails to external recipients and complying with industry regulations like HIPAA email security requirements.
3. Prevent Fraud
Email DLP software safeguards sensitive data sent from an organization’s network to external recipients. This means it can prevent workers from forwarding confidential files to third parties and automatically encrypt sensitive personal information like credit card numbers or social security numbers.
However, a key feature of an effective DLP solution is its capacity to detect human errors. For instance, if a legal secretary accidentally hits “Send” instead of “Reply,” they could send sensitive business files to the wrong individual.
To avoid this issue, intelligent DLP utilizes contextual machine learning to comprehend the context around an email being sent. This includes analyzing a user’s behavior patterns and their relationships with email senders and recipients.
These insights allow intelligent DLP to identify emails containing potentially fraudulent messages or data. This is an effective way of deterring spear phishing attacks, which are sophisticated malicious emails designed to tempt employees into sharing sensitive data by using personalized messages that appear to come directly from the sender’s own account.
4. Prevent Data Loss
Email is a common way for sensitive data to leak outside an organization. This could happen accidentally or be accessed by malicious hackers looking for the data.
Even minor breaches can result in costly fines and penalties from compliance agencies. That is why you need a comprehensive set of email security policies to guarantee sensitive data never leaves your organization’s premises in the first place.
An effective DLP system will scan all outbound email and other network traffic for predetermined patterns that indicate sensitive data, then take action to protect it, such as encrypting or blocking it.
