The Smartlockr Intelligent Data Protection Platform makes secure communication possible. To keep you informed of all developments, we will share a new or updated feature every Friday in our "Feature Friday" blog. Today we are kicking off the new year with the “BCC notification”. In this first Feature Friday of the new year, you can read all about what this notification does and what you can prevent with it.
The Dutch Data Protection Authority had a lot of work to do in 2019. In the first half of the year alone, 11,906 data breaches were reported. The biggest cause? You have probably already guessed it: sending data to the wrong recipient. But, did you know that using the To-, BCC- or CC- button can also have risks?
Example:
Even the Dutch Data Protection Authority themselves had to report a data breach last year. An employee sent an e-mail to several recipients, in which it was clear to all recipients to whom the e-mail was sent. All of the email addresses were visible, which meant that the identities of the recipients were also revealed. How did this happen? Instead of the BCC- field, all recipients were added to the To- field. This can have very negative consequences if the message also contains very sensitive information.
Just imagine what would happen if, for example, an email was sent which contained highly sensitive health information and all recipients knew that this same information applied to everyone who received the message?
Errors often occur, because of a lack of awareness and we all know how easy it is to make a mistake. This is why Smartlockr is working on new functionality, with which errors like this can be prevented.
When you, as the sender, add a certain number of recipients to the To or CC field, Smartlockr will give an alert notification. This notification reminds you to review the recipients and to see if any of them should be moved to the BCC- field. If at this point there are recipients that should be in the BCC- field, you can still move them - before sending. This prevents e-mail addresses that should not be made public from being visible to the rest of the recipients.