Google’s Data Loss Prevention Feature To Help Businesses Prevent Email Leaks

Google on Wednesday announced Data Loss Prevention (DLP) for Gmail for Google Apps Unlimited customers that will add another layer of protection to prevent sensitive information from being exposed to those who shouldn’t have it.

“Gmail DLP is the first step in a long-term investment to bring rule-based security across Google Apps. We’re working on bringing DLP to Google Drive early next year, along with other rule based security systems”, Suzanne Frey, Director, Security, Trust, and Privacy, Google Apps said in an online post.

Google for Work already provides information security tools such as encryption, sharing controls, mobile device management and two-factor authentication. However, as is said “To err is human”, sometimes a small mistake can compromise the best of all of these controls; for example, a user might hit “Reply all” when meaning to send a private message with sensitive content.

Gmail DLP will automatically check all outgoing emails and take action based on what the admin has specified: either quarantine the email for review, tell users to modify the information or block the email from being sent and notify the sender. The admins can also create custom rules with keywords and regular expressions. 

Moreover, the checks don’t just apply to email text, but also to content inside common attachment types ― such as documents, presentations and spreadsheets.