Speaking to over 6,000 employees globally, we found that nearly 90% rely on email to do their jobs. But this prevalence brings significant security risk. According to the ICO, human error is the leading cause of data breaches today.

In fact, 35% of employees told us they have sent the wrong attachment in an email and 25% have accidentally “replied all” in the past two years.

In addition, traditional email clients alone do not provide the functionality and advanced encryption required to secure emails before and after sending or ensure compliance.

Fortunately, smart email security automation can prevent data incidents.

Are you already automating email security?

The basic built-in security functionality provided by most email providers is not up to scratch for modern businesses today. For example, employees are unable to effectively recall emails sent in error; leading email clients make recalling emails practically impossible. Gmail, Outlook and Microsoft are not smart enough to empower people to avoid making basic mistakes, or alert employees to the presence of sensitive data in the body and attachments of emails. Autofill makes it all too easy to send information to the wrong recipient (we’ve all been there).

Simply put, standard email clients such as Google, Outlook and Microsoft 365 are not smart enough to protect your sensitive emails and attachments.

In fact, smart automation should simplify workflows and make behaving securely effortless for people.

Do you need to automate email security?

If email communication is a cornerstone of your business (and, as our Freedom to Focus research points out, it more than likely is), you can’t afford not to automate email security.

Automating outbound email security is the only sure way to directly address and prevent human error. This value is amplified by employee headcount. The more employees there are emailing on a regular basis, the greater the human risk and, as such, the potential impact of a security solution.

How to avoid data incidents by automating email security

Third generation email security empowers employees to secure their sensitive emails with super smart functionality and automation. Here’s how:

• Improve efficiency with seamless integration. Find an email security solution that integrates with your email client, effectively aligning with existing employee behaviour. If a solution doesn’t have a native integration and takes effort to use, employees will be more likely to make mistakes or fail to follow protocol correctly.

Zivver seamlessly integrates with Outlook, Microsoft 365 and Gmail and provides an effortless experience for employees; they don’t need to switch between multiple communications platforms to be secure or get the job done.

Zivver also integrates with leading platforms across various industries, such as Chipsoft HiX, Microsoft eDiscovery, and Salesforce CRM. These integrations support bulk mailing from source systems like electronic customer files, using a secured line with SMTP.

• Data logging to support compliance. By automatically logging email and user activity data, IT leaders have the information at their fingertips to swiftly analyse potential data incidents and take control.

Zivver’s automation functionality also offers administrative benefits: recording audit and communication logs, tracking which messages were revoked and opened, and which warnings were ignored.

Zivver’s Proof of Delivery feature also supports compliance with GDPR, generating legally certifiable reports to prove when a message was sent, received and accessed.

• Learn from user behaviour to streamline workflows. Our smart solution empowers users by learning from behaviour to alert employees to potential errors. For example, employees are alerted to the presence of a new email address in the 'to' field, as well as sensitive information in the body and attachments of emails, before they hit send. If the user decides to send the email, they won’t be alerted again when sending similar information to that contact.

Securing sensitive emails and files isn’t complex. In fact, smart technology exists now to do the hard work for your people.

Find out how Zivver can reduce outbound email security risk for your organization with smart automation and end-to-end encryption.