New Adaptive Email Data Loss Prevention closes a gap in DLP strategies, stopping misdirected email to prevent reputational damage, customer churn and regulatory fines

SUNNYVALE, Calif. – March 27, 2024 – Proofpoint, Inc., a leading cybersecurity and compliance company, today announced the general availability of Adaptive Email Data Loss Prevention (DLP) to automatically detect and prevent accidental and intentional data loss over email before it becomes a costly mistake for organizations. Combining Proofpoint's industry-leading threat and data loss protection technology and intelligence with Tessian's AI-powered behavioral and dynamic detection provides organizations with the most comprehensive defense available against human layer risks.

Data loss over email is a widespread yet preventable problem; 71% of IT professionals attribute the main cause of data loss at their organization to careless employees, attaching the wrong files in an email, emailing sensitive data to a personal account, or sending emails to the wrong recipient. ​In fact, misdirected email is one of the simplest and most significant sources of data loss – about one-third of employees send emails to the wrong recipient each year. A misdirected email containing employee or customer data can potentially trigger a significant fine under privacy frameworks like CCPA and GDPR.

Stopping Email Blunders Before They Happen

Adaptive Email DLP uses behavioral AI to automatically detect, prevent and mitigate accidental and intentional data loss in real time over email, preventing breaches that are difficult to stop with traditional pre-defined DLP rules. Adaptive Email DLP stops data breaches over email by:

• Understanding typical employee behavior by analyzing hundreds of data points on every email and its attachments through relationship graphs, deep content inspection and behavioral AI.


• Protecting organizations’ sensitive data when the wrong recipient is auto-filled or employees share the wrong attachment.


• Providing in-the-moment coaching to help users correct their mistakes and prevent sensitive data loss incidents.

“Data doesn’t lose itself – people lose it, careless employees mishandle it, malicious users walk out the door with it, and compromised accounts are hijacked to steal it,” said Ryan Kalember, chief strategy officer at Proofpoint. “Rules-based DLP systems are a critical part of every company’s security program, but they can only catch pre-defined risks, making them blind to many data loss incidents. Adaptive Email DLP takes a behavioral AI-based approach to catch what rules-based DLP systems miss and help organizations reduce human risk.”    

Supporting Quotes:

• “We are excited to use the same Adaptive Email technology we use internally and deliver it to our clients with Proofpoint and Tessian.  With the solution, Optiv clients can be confident in addressing all known and unknown sensitive data loss risks.” – Max Shier, Chief Information Security Officer, Optiv


• “Tessian has refined its superior vision to not only focus on protecting the human layer but also to frame email security as a means to elevate security culture within organizations.” –  Forrester, The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Email Security, Q2 2023, Lisa Burn, June 12, 2023


• "Overall, we feel that Proofpoint DLP has lived up the hype of being able to protect and secure our data security measures." – IT Security and Risk Management manager, Gartner Peer Insights™ review


• “Invest in a DLP solution that can understand the full lineage of the data, identify baseline activities for the user, and compare subsequent actions to the baseline activity by gathering contextual clues about the who, what, when and where of the data.”– Gartner, Market Guide for Data Loss Prevention, Ravisha Chugh and Andrew Bales, September 4, 2023.

For more information about Proofpoint Adaptive Email DLP solution, visit: https://www.proofpoint.com/us/products/adaptive-email-dlp

For more information about Proofpoint’s Information Protection platform, visit: https://www.proofpoint.com/us/products/information-protection

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About Proofpoint, Inc. 

Proofpoint, Inc. is a leading cybersecurity and compliance company that protects organizations’ greatest assets and biggest risks: their people. With an integrated suite of cloud-based solutions, Proofpoint helps companies around the world stop targeted threats, safeguard their data, and make their users more resilient against cyber attacks. Leading organizations of all sizes, including 85 percent of the Fortune 100, rely on Proofpoint for people-centric security and compliance solutions that mitigate their most critical risks across email, the cloud, social media, and the web. More information is available at www.proofpoint.com. 

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Proofpoint is a registered trademark or tradename of Proofpoint, Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries. All other trademarks contained herein are the property of their respective owners.