The Top 8 Outbound Email Security Solutions

Armorblox protects enterprises from targeted email attacks and outbound data loss. It also protects against inbound email attacks including business email compromise, account takeover and CEO impersonation. Armorblox prevents outbound email data loss with automated mailbox remediation, PII/PCI compliance and confidential content protection. Armorblox’s detection engine analyzes behavior and language across all email communications to malicious email behaviors.

Armorblox provides three main outbound data loss prevention capabilities. It detects accidental or malicious data loss over emails, such as account passwords, social security numbers, and financial information. It allows organizations to set pre-defined policies that automatically block emails with sensitive attachments from being sent. It also stops confidential email content from being accessed by unauthorized users. The platform works by leveraging language understanding, deep learning, machine learning and statistical techniques to identify signals that signify malicious email behaviors.

Armorblox is a cloud native platform and is suitable for O365 and G-suite users. It deploys via an API and works inside the email environment to protect your users from threats. Armorblox is built for use in the enterprise and offers role-based access controls, and detailed audit reports to provide admins greater insights to user activities. As Armorblox provides inbound email threat protection alongside outbound security, it’s a good option for organizations looking for rounded email protection.

Read our interview with Rob Fry, CTO at Armorblox, here.

Egress Prevent is a leading outbound human layer security solution. It aims to stop data breaches before they happen, by stopping human errors within emails. Human error can involve falling for targeted phishing attacks or business email compromise attempts, or simply sending a sensitive email to the wrong recipient. Egress also provides intelligent email encryption, which automatically applies the best encryption polices based on the sensitivity of the data being sent. Egress’ eDiscovery solution, Investigate, provides reporting, analytics and insights into email communications.

Egress Prevent uses contextual machine learning to spot when employees are about to accidentally or intentionally leak data and stop breaches before they can happen. It uses machine learning data, recipient domain analysis and analysis of communication history to intelligently learn communication patterns to stop emails going to the wrong people. This ensures that users are sending emails to the right people, prevents email mistakes, and helps to reduce the risks of data loss from human error.

By scanning email content, looking at past communication patterns and analyzing the security of recipient domains, Egress is able to intelligently apply the most suitable level of encryption needed for emails to be sent securely, automatically. This simplifies the user experience for encryption, and helps to ensure that all emails are protected, while less sensitive emails remain easy to open and interact with. Egress works inside Office 365 and Outlook, and is able to display warning banners directly to users when the service detects a mistake is about to be made. Egress is a strong solution for solving the problem of misaddressed emails and insider data breaches. This solution is typically leveraged by customers in healthcare, financial services, legal, and both government and local government agencies.

Forcepoint DLP enables security teams to create and enforce data loss prevention policies across cloud, web, endpoint, network, and email, in order to prevent data leaks and streamline compliance.  

Once deployed, admins can configure data security policies to help identify and secure sensitive data. To streamline this, Forcepoint DLP offers over 1,700 classifiers and policy templates, including specific templates for PII and PHI. It can also adjust policies based on the context of users’ behavior. Once configured, Forcepoint DLP discovers and classifies sensitive data in the cloud and on-premises. It then monitors your entire environment for instances of users interacting with sensitive data, and automatically blocks any unauthorized actions, such as a user trying to attach a sensitive file to an email or send it to someone who isn’t authorized to view it. The platform also offers robust reporting functionality; admins can create and report on email security policies—as well as web, cloud, and endpoint—from a single, modern dashboard.

Forcepoint DLP can be deployed on-premises or in the cloud. It offers unified policy management and reporting across your entire environment, and can adapt to offer basic compliance coverage or more advanced intellectual property protection. Overall, we recommend Forcepoint DLP as a strong solution for any organization looking to prevent sensitive data loss not only via email, but across all channels.  

Fortra Email Data Loss Prevention protects sensitive data against outbound loss, misuse, and unauthorized access. It also prevents users from receiving unsolicited leaked data via inbound email. To achieve this, the platform automatically scans documents and images for sensitive data, and removes it before delivering a safe and compliant version to the intended recipient.

Email Data Loss Prevention uses Fortra’s Adaptive Redaction technology to inspect the contents of email attachments, including zip and encrypted files and images. This technology deconstructs files into their constituent parts so that it can identify sensitive or personal information. When it identifies such information, it removes, deletes, or sanitizes it from the file as per admin-configured policies, then reconstructs the file so the user can send it without delay. The platform also offers on-box encryption (TLS, S/MIME, PGP, and Portal), integrated antivirus/antimalware, and anti-spam capabilities.

Fortra Email Data Loss Prevention was designed to complement Microsoft 365 and existing email security tools. It effectively prevents data exfiltration by non-authorized individuals or malware, and helps ensure compliance with data privacy and protection regulations. Overall, we recommend this platform for organizations looking to bolster their existing email gateway without outbound data loss prevention.   

Material is a multi-layered email threat detection and response platform for Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace. It blocks inbound attacks such as spear phishing, detects and contains account takeover, fixes misconfigurations and risky behaviors, and detects and secures sensitive data across inboxes and shared drives.

When it comes to outbound email protection and DLP, Material detects and classifies sensitive data, syncing mailboxes and Drive footprints to create a comprehensive view of what data you have, where it’s stored, and how it’s used. The platform offers dozens of built-in classification categories, and you can also create your own as needed. Once Material has identified your sensitive data, you can set up granular access controls (inc. multi-factor authentication) and file-sharing restrictions to protect it.  

Material also monitors your email environment for risky activities, and triggers automated response workflows when it detects a threat. These include contacting the file owner with a warning, preventing password resets, revoking external sharing access, and blocking sensitive data access altogether. Finally, the platform scans historical email content to detect sensitive data stored in users mailboxes, and automatically removes sensitive and non-compliant data, limiting the impact of account takeover or email compromise attacks.  

 Material deploys via API, and can be set up within M365 and Google Workspace environments in under 30 minutes. The platform can be deployed to all users, or a subset of “VIP” users who require additional protection against data leaks and exfiltration. Overall, we recommend Material as a strong solution for any sized organization looking to secure sensitive data stored inside user inboxes. 

Office 365 allows admins to define rules and policies to determine which files and data are confidential, critical or sensitive, in order to protect them from being accidentally or maliciously shared or transmitted. The aim of this is to stop data loss from the Office 365 environment. This includes email channels and within OneDrive. Recently data loss prevention capabilities have been added to Microsoft Teams chats. This is available as part of the Office 365 Advanced Compliance module, which is available as a standalone option and is included in Microsoft 365 E5 compliance.

Microsoft’s DLP for Office 365 was launched in 2017, giving users new features to manage data loss prevention. Users can set policies within O365 to manage data that can be shared and receive notifications when someone tries to violate rules. Putting DLP policies in place allows organizations to identify sensitive information across Exchange, SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams. Admins can then apply policies to stop this data from being shared accidentally outside the organization. This also applies inside Office applications like Word, PowerPoint, or Excel. When a user tries to share restricted documents, they are sent a notification that alerts them to a potential error and gives them the option to override the policy if needed. The solution also provides reporting, so admins can view where sensitive data is being shared, and by which users.

As Microsoft O365 DLP relies on static policies and rules to manage data loss, it is not a suitable solution to stop misaddressed emails and human error within emails as some of the other options on this list are. Services like Egress and Tessian use machine learning to stop data that is supposed to be shared from going to the wrong place, rather than stopping it from being shared all together. However, O365 DLP has some unique benefits, including stopping data loss from within OneDrive, Office programs, and within Microsoft Teams. This is a good solution for organizations using Office 365 that need protection against data loss, with policies to stop sensitive data from leaving the organization.

Proofpoint Adaptive Email DLP prevents users from sending email to the wrong recipient and from exfiltrating data to unauthorized parties (including themselves). The platform uses relationship graphs, deep content inspection, and behavioral analysis to analyze users’ working relationships and normal sending patterns. It then analyzes all sent emails, comparing them to this baseline to identify anomalous behavior, misdirected emails, wrong-file attachments, and exfiltration attempts.

Adaptive Email DLP automatically classifies sensitive data and discovers users’ personal email accounts based on their email behavior. If the platform detects a user trying to send sensitive data to an unauthorized account (including their own personal account), it blocks or tracks the email in line with admin-configured policies, preventing sensitive data exfiltration. If Adaptive Email DLP notices a user trying to send an email to the wrong recipient or attaching the wrong file to their email, it displays a pop-up warning in real time that tells the user they might be about to share sensitive information with the wrong person. This real-time coaching helps users to correct their mistakes and policy violations before they happen, whilst reducing post-breach remediation work for the security team.

Proofpoint Adaptive Email DLP is quick to set up and requires very little configuration. The platform integrates seamlessly into users’ daily workflows and delivers robust security with minimal disruption to productivity. Overall, we recommend Adaptive Email DLP to any organization looking to prevent users from accidentally or intentionally sharing sensitive data outside their organization.  

VIPRE SafeSend is a cloud-based email data loss prevention (DLP) tool designed to prevent employees from sending sensitive information internally or externally to unintended recipients. This tool is crucial for avoiding phishing attacks, insider data breaches, and costly compliance fines associated with data mishandling. 

SafeSend works by scanning all email content and attachments to detect sensitive information, such as personally identifiable information (PII). If this type of content is identified, additional controls are automatically applied to prevent accidental or intentional data breaches.  

Admins can define the types and categories of data that the system should identify and protect. It also enables the creation of user groups, facilitating the application of specific security settings tailored to different organizational needs. 

SafeSend operates seamlessly with Microsoft 365 Outlook, ensuring easy deployment and minimal maintenance. As an added benefit, VIPRE SafeSend includes embedded security awareness training, directly reinforcing best practices within the email inbox with warning banners. This helps employees maintain vigilance against data security risks, further strengthening the organization’s security posture.

We recommend VIPRE SafeSend for organizations looking for a comprehensive, customizable, and easy-to-implement solution that bolsters email data protection and minimizes the risk of data loss.