The practice focused on involves safeguarding sensitive information transmitted via electronic mail. This includes preventing confidential client details, financial records, or proprietary intellectual property from leaving an organization’s control without authorization. For example, software might automatically detect and block an email containing credit card numbers from being sent to an external address.
Such measures are vital for maintaining regulatory compliance, protecting brand reputation, and preventing financial loss. The need for these protections has grown exponentially with the increasing reliance on email communication and the escalating threat of cyberattacks and insider breaches. Early approaches involved basic content filtering; current systems employ sophisticated techniques such as machine learning to identify and classify sensitive data.
