Preventing email data loss in Microsoft 365 Report

Thousands of organisations across the world enjoy the productivity benefits Microsoft 365 brings. It’s simple, easy to use, and can boost efficiency across entire networks. And it does come with some security features. However, organisations need to augment this traditional DLP with intelligent security to truly minimise email data loss.

Egress research has shown that 85% of organisations have had an outbound email data breach in the last 12 months. 67% of IT leaders also acknowledged an increase in the number of incidents compared with pre-pandemic rates of data loss. They were also highly concerned about the future of remote working and being able to protect client data.

Download your report to keep for a full understanding of email DLP in Microsoft 365.

How often is data being leaked?

The short answer is often! This points to organisations needing to augment their current email DLP strategy to prevent these incidents from happening.

Organisations have seen a 67% increase in data leaks via email since March 2020. And these aren’t one-off incidents. We learned that 15% of organisations had been breached over 500 times during that same time period.

What are the impacts?

The fallout after a data breach can be far-reaching – from regulatory fines to reputational damage. When a business is experiencing many data loss incidents a year, these impacts stack up. Clients are also becoming increasingly aware of who they do and don’t trust to protect their data.

Our report has uncovered that organisations are spending more time going through internal remediation and investigation, suffering more client churn, and are more frequently asked by clients if they have DLP tools in place.

28% of IT leaders told us client data was the most likely type to be leaked compared – so it’s not surprising that clients are taking notice.

Limitations of static email DLP

Static DLP technologies can mitigate some email data loss incidents – but alone they’re not enough to dynamically mitigate incidents in the way current email use requires. Out of the IT leaders we spoke to using static DLP, an incredible 100% of respondents were frustrated by its use.

In a remote-first world (where email is being relied on more heavily than ever before) traditional DLP solutions have been unable to combat the rising tide of email data loss.  Our findings show that IT leaders are more concerned than ever about the risks associated with both remote working and employees working from mobile devices.

With remote working here to stay, businesses need solutions they can trust to keep digital communication channels secure and allow them to share content confidently.

What's next for your organisation?

There’s no doubt that Microsoft 365 is a useful productivity tool – but its native security functionality needs a complementary (and intelligent) solution to combat the issue of outbound email. The only way to truly prevent human-activated breaches is through technology that understands human behaviour.

Intelligent Email Security uses machine learning to adapt to each individual user’s working patterns and sharing data, whether they’re remote or in the office. This allows it to detect the context-driven incidents.

Intelligent ‘human layer security’ should be a key component of every organisation’s security strategy going forward, allowing them to both protect data and help employees to remain productive.

Interested in the full story on email data loss in Microsoft 365? Download your full report to keep for all the latest statistics on outbound email risk – plus industry-leading advice on how to keep your organisation secure from email data loss.