In May 2010 details relating to a “significant” number of companies who do business with Tralee Town Council in Ireland was sent to rival suppliers by email.

The incident was a result of an error using a mail merge application used in the generation of pre-electronic fund transfer checks. This resulted in emails being issued out of sequence. Consequently, bank details of companies who do business with the council were released to other companies.

A similar breach occurred when in 2008 when one of Eli Lilly’s (a major pharmaceutical) outside lawyers at Philadelphia-based Pepper Hamilton had mistakenly emailed highly confidential information on settlement talks with the US government to New York Times reporter Alex Berenson instead of Bradford Berenson, her co-counsel at another law firm Sidley Austin. The content of the email was regarding a $1b secret settlement on the Zyprexa drug investigation.
 
To prevent embarrassing moments like these, Enterprise Rights Management can prevent situations like these where an email that contains confidential information like financial details, trade secrets, and boardroom communications are encrypted and need to be authenticated before access to the content is granted.

This solution does not have to be deployed across the enterprise but only in business units that deal with confidential data on a daily basis. If you think that your current operations could expose you to the same risk as Tralee Town Council or Eli Lilly, then you need to investigate how Enterprise Rights Management can resolve this problem

If you have any questions on Enterprise Rights Management, send me your comments.