Our latest research shows that employees’ preferred form of business communication is email. 93% of employees say email is important or very important in their day-to-day work. 85% say they like using email. The same percentage, however, also say they want to “feel safe” while using it.  

Our research suggests that email security is indeed a significant concern for many. 58% of employees say it is too easy to make mistakes when using email. More than half (52%) admit to making email mistakes at least once every few months and 30% confess that they make mistakes frequently - at least once every couple of weeks.  

Wider industry research repeatedly reveals that human error is the primary cause behind email insecurity. The human element was a component in 68% of security breaches last year alone. The financial consequences are serious. The average cost of a data breach worldwide currently stands at $4.5 million. 

Why email DLP best practices are important for business 

It’s this business context that means that email data loss prevention (DLP) is crucial.  

What is email DLP and how does it work? Email DLP is a comprehensive set of technologies and practices applied to all three phases of email: before hitting send, during transmission, and after sending. The goal? To ensure that end users don’t share confidential or sensitive data outside their organization without applying the appropriate encryption protocols or following secure procedures. 

Email DLP is important to all industries, but in those that handle highly sensitive data, such as government, healthcare and finance, it’s a must. 

5 essential email DLP best practices 

There are various data loss prevention best practices you can adopt organisation wide. Here are five of the most essential.  

1. Empower people to avoid common human errors 
   We’ve talked about human error being the primary source of a data breach. With the right tools and training in place, help your workforce avoid making common mistakes such as missent emails or failure to use BCC correctly.  
2. Utilize AI to set up sensitive data detection rules 
   Empower your employees to avoid sending sensitive data without proper encryption. AI powered tools integrate with Gmail and Outlook to scan message content and attachments for sensitive data patterns (based on predefined rules) prior to sending. If the solution identifies a potential issue, it will alert the sender and suggest corrective action.   
3. Set up encryption for email and file sharing 
   Some email DLP solutions automatically apply encryption during transit while others allow you to select which emails to encode. When it comes to file sharing, instead of allowing your employees to turn to non-compliant file sharing platforms, set them up with an email DLP solution that allows for the transfer of large files within email – and has in-built encryption.  
4. Insist on two factor authentication (2FA) 
   For highly sensitive files, insist on authenticating recipient identity by setting up two factor authentication. 2FA requires recipients to verify their identity before they can open an email, meaning that unauthorized individuals cannot access the contents.  
5. Enable email revocation you can rely on 
   Most native email clients have a basic form of email revocation, enabling you to recall or revoke access to an email sent to the wrong person. However, most come with significant limitations. There are email DLP solutions that integrate with existing email clients and provide comprehensive recall functionality.  

Why native email clients don’t cut it for DLP  

DLP best practices simply can’t be met when relying solely on most native email clients. Very few provide the level of data loss protection you need when dealing with sensitive data. Limitations include: 

• No capability to send large files within emails 

• Limited ability to revoke access to missent emails  

• Time limits on email recall 

• No sensitive data detection functionality 

• No 2FA functionality 

• Poor data encryption capabilities 

Stop data loss in its tracks 

Email DLP best practices are essential to certain critical business use cases, including: 

Meeting compliance requirements  

For highly regulated industries with stringent data compliance requirements like DORA, ISO27001 or NIS2, email DLP helps to ensure those frameworks are adhered to. Non-compliance or inadequate threat protection risks exposing your organization to fines and sanctions. 

Mitigating risk 

Better to manage and mitigate risk before it happens. Email DLP solutions can provide critical risk management tools to reduce the likelihood of human error such as risk scores, which assess the likelihood of a user’s IT behaviour leading to a security breach. 

Managing incidents 

Implement data loss prevention by defining and applying DLP policies to identify, monitor and automatically protect sensitive items across your email workflows.  

Assessing risk  

If an incident does occur, detailed logs of all actions related to an email can be extremely helpful when assessing the impact of the problem. Seeing when an email was sent, opened and by whom allows CISOs and their IT teams to accurately understand the scale of any issue and take the appropriate corrective steps.  

With insights from over 400 IT leaders and 2000 employees, our latest Email Security Trends report explores how IT leaders are tackling DLP this year. Read the full report.