In today’s fast-paced digital world, email is an essential communication tool, and autocomplete features in platforms like Outlook are designed to enhance productivity by predicting and suggesting email addresses. However, this convenience comes with inherent risks, as selecting the wrong recipient can lead to embarrassing errors or data breaches that compromise business security.
This article explores the potential pitfalls of autocomplete, the balance between efficiency and security, and how intelligent tools like Egress Prevent can help mitigate these risks while maintaining productivity.
Avoid that email mistake
- Autocomplete – the productivity tool with risk attached. Autocomplete in Outlook is designed to make life easier by detecting sent and inbound email addresses and adding them as suggested recipients for future emails. Users type a few letters of an address and autocomplete does the rest… but it doesn’t always select the right recipient. The tool also adds mistyped addresses to its directory, making it easy to repeat the mistake in future.
- Autocomplete fail is a familiar experience for many. Autocomplete fail is a familiar experience for many. It may just result in red faces, but if confidential data in the email or file attachment has been sent to the wrong recipient, it could cause a data breach that puts the business at risk.
- Address autocomplete anxiety. Egress Prevent uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to detect when an email address may have been selected in error by autocomplete and alert the user.
Keep autosuggestion active
- Keep the benefits, lose the risks. Autocomplete is a time-saving tool, especially given the volume of emails sent every day. Disabling it can have a serious impact on productivity.
- Intelligent real-time user support. Egress intelligently learns and analyses user behaviour, examining whether the selected recipient been emailed before and if they usually receive this type of content.
- Scrutinize domain security. Egress scrutinizes domain authenticity and security characteristics to identify whether an address error may be present. Users are alerted at the point of send so mistakes can be corrected before they become a breach.
How to disable autocomplete
- Disabling autocomplete is a big decision. Some enterprises have taken this approach in a bid to mitigate security risk, but as one risk reduces, others increase.
- Mistyped addresses increase. Users who have to type full email addresses are more likely to make mistakes, resulting in mis-sent emails and potential data loss.
- Risk of user workarounds. Without the ease of autocomplete, users are likely to create their own directories in other applications. This may lead to the storage of personal contact data on local devices, creating a risk for the business.
- Think differently about autocomplete. Egress Prevent supports users to work with their preferred productivity tools such as autocomplete. By adding an intelligent security layer that identifies mistakes before they become breaches, businesses can reduce risk and retain performance.