It's here: the 2020 Outbound Email Security Report

From remote working to stressed employees making simple mistakes – there are many factors behind email data breaches. For our 2020 Outbound Email Security Report, we commissioned Arlington Research to independently survey over 500 security and IT professionals working around the globe. The results are eye-opening.

We found that 93% of organisations experienced outbound email breaches in the last 12 months alone. And these breaches happen with alarming regularity – in fact, on average, organisations experienced an incident every 12 working hours.

Most importantly, these breaches have significant impacts. With 33% of organisations across Legal, Financial Services, Banking and Healthcare suffering direct financial repercussions from a serious breach, it’s clearly time for organisations to examine why their current approach to outbound email security isn’t preventing these incidents.

The report also examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on outbound email. Already, organisations are experiencing an increase in risk simply due to the rise in email communication caused by remote working.

Employees are suffering, too. According to our research, we’ve found that the working from home environment is far from ideal when it comes to maintaining robust email security protocols. It’s no wonder, then, that the majority of CISOs we spoke to (70%) would feel more secure working from the office.

Naturally, the events of the past few months have made everybody more stressed. Human behaviour is hard to predict at the best of times – but right now, it’s impossible to plan for. Unsurprisingly, it was revealed in our findings that employees feeling ‘rushed, tired or stressed’ were behind 37% of breaches last year.

It’s likely that these figures will only continue to grow as the pandemic continues and organisations navigate the choppy waters between office-based and remote working.

One thing that’s certain is that legacy security solutions such as traditional DLP have failed to provide the protection organisations need. This is something that Egress CEO Tony Pepper has long argued. As the report reveals, organisations across every sector we spoke to are currently not properly protected.

It all creates a perfect storm. The risk is high and only getting higher. The steps CISOs and senior leaders take now will define organisations’ IT security over the challenging, unprecedented times to come. Succeed, and the risks will be mitigated. Fail, and breaches will continue to result in fines, negative publicity, and even costly personal litigation from data subjects.

To understand the risk and see what’s affecting your organisation, download the full report today.