How Much Sensitive Data Is Your Organization Sharing? - Virtru

Data flows in and out of organizations at high velocity, with the average employee sending over 10,000 emails every year. 

Email is the primary way colleagues communicate, and with the recent global transition to remote work, email has become even more critical to collaboration. While outgoing emails can represent a security risk to an organization, they can also create immense opportunity: When collaborators are able to share data confidently and securely, they unlock greater innovation.  

Virtru’s Data Sharing & Risk Calculator can help you quickly assess your organization’s outgoing email footprint, helping you identify opportunities to secure and protect the important data your organization creates and shares. 

How to Take Control of Your Shared Data

Business growth depends on the ability to share data. However, maintaining control over that data across its full life cycle can be a challenge. 

An estimated 70%* of sent emails contain sensitive information. Once that information is shared, most organizations lose all visibility into what happens to it. From there, it can take on a life of its own: The recipient may, knowingly or unknowingly, share that sensitive data with a broader audience than was originally intended. 

But organizations can maintain control of their data, even after it’s shared, by using Virtru’s secure email and file sharing solutions. Not only can Virtru users and administrators see where sensitive data has been shared; they can also revoke access at any time, set an expiration date, and disable forwarding. 

With this additional layer of protection, organizations can empower their employees to share data with the confidence that it is always under their control. 

Some Data Sharing Risks to Consider

Conversely, choosing not to protect outgoing emails can present significant risks to an organization, potentially making it susceptible to a breach. 

According to IBM, the average data breach costs $3.86 million. Consider the following expenses that can contribute to that number: 

• Penalties for violating compliance regulations such as HIPAA, CCPA, GDPR, or ITAR
• Lost business due to customer turnover and brand damages that can hinder growth
• Operational disruptions, including lost employee productivity
• Reactive costs associated with mitigating, communicating and resolving a breach
• Civil damages resulting from class-action lawsuits
• Theft of brand-differentiating intellectual property and trade secrets 
• Risk of job termination for involved employees, as well as potential enterprise-wide turnover

Learn more about the specific risks associated with various compliance regulations on Virtru’s Data Sharing Calculator page.

Share Your Data Securely, With Confidence

When protected, outgoing emails can create vast opportunities for your business, but unprotected, they become a substantial risk. With Virtru, your organization can control sensitive data, everywhere it’s shared. 

Find out how your organization can protect those outgoing emails and the sensitive data they contain. Contact Virtru for a free analysis and learn more about your organization’s data security and privacy risk.

*Figure based on Virtru’s proprietary data, which reflects hundreds of millions of emails sent. This data is based on analyzing the highest-security actions taken by Virtru’s DLP engine when scanning an email for sensitive data, per the DLP rules configured by admins across Virtru’s customer base. Virtru does not specify what counts as “sensitive data.” This percentage is based on what our customer admins have configured/decided is sensitive for their organizations.