Email is a staple communication for most businesses, increasing efficiency, productivity, and business readiness. But when security measures complicate the process of sending a message, users are tempted to find workarounds, leaving businesses at risk of releasing sensitive information unchecked via email. Securing email communication by discovering and protecting the sensitive data it contains is a critical component of any complete data protection strategy.
PKWARE’s Microsoft Outlook add-in, PK Secure Email, leverages proven discovery capabilities to identify the existence of sensitive information in subject lines, message bodies, and attachments. It then enforces protection such as encryption, redaction, or blocking the message from being sent.
Download this solution overview to learn more about how PK Secure Email uses policy-based controls to establish security across your organization without negatively impacting sender or recipient workflows.
Email Is Where Security Controls Get Worked Around
Email is the default business channel because it is fast and everyone has it. When protecting a message becomes complicated, senders find another route, and the organization loses visibility of the exact transfers it most wanted to see.
That makes the usability of the control the security question. A protection step that costs thirty seconds and a decision will be skipped under deadline; one that happens automatically will not.
Inspecting the Whole Message, Not Just the Attachment
Sensitive information does not stay in the attachment. It appears in subject lines, in the body, in a quoted thread three replies down, and in a document nobody re-read before forwarding.
Discovery runs across all three surfaces, which is what makes the policy decision reliable rather than a guess based on whether a file was attached.
Three Responses, Chosen by Policy
Once sensitive content is identified, the add-in enforces one of three outcomes: encrypt the message, redact the sensitive elements, or block the send outright.
Having all three available is what keeps the control proportionate. Blocking everything sensitive stops legitimate work; encrypting everything obscures messages that did not need it; redaction handles the case where the message should go but one element should not.
Policy by Circumstance, Not by Blanket Rule
Protection is defined against the situation rather than applied uniformly. Rules can vary by user, by group, by whether the recipient is internal or external, by specific named recipients, and by the type of sensitive content detected.
That granularity is what allows a strict standard for external transfers of regulated data to coexist with a light touch on internal correspondence, without asking either group to think about it.
Automatic Where It Should Be, Prompted Where It Should Not
Some protection should happen silently because there is no legitimate alternative. Some benefits from asking the sender, where context the system cannot see might change the answer.
Supporting both is the difference between a control that fits how people work and one that generates exceptions. Automated protection covers the clear cases; a prompt covers the ambiguous ones and keeps the sender accountable for the judgement.
Why It Sits Inside Outlook
A control that lives in the tool people already use has no adoption curve. There is no second application to open, no separate portal to log into, and no training required to explain where the secure option is.
Protection applied at the point of sending is also the only point at which the organization still has a choice. After the message leaves, everything else is detection and response.