One of our customers calls it the “oops” moment: The moment you realize that you mistyped the email address when you sent that customer list. Or when your colleague gently broke the news that you replied-all on something you shouldn’t have replied-all to. (Maybe your word of choice is more colorful than "oops," but otherwise, the scenario is pretty universal.)
These moments happen, because we are humans who make mistakes. We also have access to sensitive data at work — whether that’s customer information, health records, intellectual property, or even our own benefits and payroll information.
To prevent these incidents and reduce the risk of data loss, many Virtru customers choose to implement domain-wide security. Many choose the Virtru Gateway to cover their domains, but you could also deploy Virtru’s client-side email encryption and Virtru Secure Share to all users across your domain. Here are a few examples of what this looks like for Virtru customers today.
A Safety Net for Human Error
Security leaders find themselves in the aftermath of those “oops” moments, having to manage the consequences, at scale, across an organization. Often they are left to deal with the ramifications of data oversharing, or accidentally sharing PHI or PII, and the fallout can be intense.
Here’s how Jason Karn, Chief Compliance Officer at Total HIPAA, describes it:
“The real issue is, ‘What do you do when you send PHI to the wrong person?’ We have people with multiple ‘Johns’ in their contact list — they may send it to the wrong John. We had a client going through a major breach because of social engineering: Someone spoofed a member of upper management, and an employee sent out a file with names and PHI. It became a real issue — we had to report it as a breach to The Department of Health and Human Services. If they’d had Virtru, they could have just denied access to the email and this entire crisis could have been averted. The impact would have been limited, it would have had tracking, and they could have changed the access controls. Now, the horse is out of the barn. The barn is on fire. It’s, ‘What do we do now?’’“
The Virtru Control Center provides detailed audit information for all protected emails and files that go out. So, in the case Jason described above, the Virtru Gateway may have either blocked or encrypted that outgoing file based on the security rules the admin put in place to protect PHI. If that content still went out, but was protected with Virtru, then both the user and the administrator could take immediate action to revoke access to that file once they realized the mistake. They could also see whether the recipient had opened it, providing important forensics for security incidents.
The Inevitable Need to Share Something Sensitive
Some organizations choose to deploy Virtru only to select teams who encounter more sensitive information. This is a logical way of thinking, but the reality is that every employee, regardless of role, will eventually need to share sensitive information. Here’s how Ram Avrahami, Head of Global IT and IS for NEXT Insurance, puts it:
“We want everyone to have the ability to protect the files they’re sending. At some point, everybody in the company will need to share something sensitive—maybe not daily, maybe not weekly—but eventually, they’ll need to.”
From HR professionals handling employee demographic data, to sales representatives discussing contract details, sensitive communications happen throughout your organization every day, many on an ad-hoc basis. By deploying something like the Virtru Gateway domain-wide, you establish a universal safety net that catches sensitive information before it leaves your organization unprotected. This approach eliminates the guesswork about which employees "need" encryption and ensures consistent protection across all communications.
Decide Once: No More Software Licensing Calculus
The Virtru Gateway can be easily deployed across your entire domain, so you don’t have to tally licenses or buy more seats when your company hires new employees. Instead, a deployed Virtru Gateway runs server-side for all emails flowing out of your domain. No fuss, no tallying and budgeting at the license level. No switching users to stay within your seat count. Just a simple, blanket solution that fits your budget and covers your organization.
You can also do this with Virtru’s other solutions, like end-to-end encryption for Gmail and Outlook, with an enterprise licensing agreement.
As one Virtru higher education customer recently put it,
"It's nice now that we don't have to worry about policing every account anymore. We don't have to look at what this particular division is doing. You don't have to think about if it's the business office handling PII, the registrar handling PII. We don't have to think, 'Would this one other department not handle it?'"
Admin Visibility and Control Over Inbound and Outbound Emails
One of the most compelling reasons for enterprise-wide deployment is the centralized visibility it provides. With Virtru implemented across your domain, security teams gain:
- Real-time insights into what sensitive information is being shared, and who has access.
- Granular audit trail of data sharing, including whether a message has been opened or not.
- Early detection of potential security risks or unusual sharing patterns.
- Ability to revoke or change access permissions at any time, even if the data has left the perimeter.
This comprehensive view enables proactive data governance and helps identify areas where additional security training might be beneficial. If you're using the Virtru Gateway, you can also set up inbound protection for the sensitive data flowing into your organization. You can customize inbound and outbound workflows according to the rules you want to put in place. All of this can be configured easily in the Virtru Control Center.
One administrator, Rebecca Dean, Program Manager - Operational Excellence at Xealth, had this to say about governing data sharing with Virtru email encryption and Virtru Secure Share:
“We had a request yesterday: ‘We need to share some analytics data, and it's a pretty big file — what's the proper method of getting this to the customer?’ And, with Virtru, I can see when they share it and make sure that they are putting an expiration date on the files to be shared. We've always told people, ‘If you share it, make it temporary,’ but now, I can very easily audit and make sure that happens. And it's easy for the user to do that up front, or if they forget, we can update [the security settings], which is also handy.”
Easy Deployment and Peace of Mind for Small IT Teams
For IT departments already stretched thin with competing priorities, a domain-wide Virtru deployment offers welcome relief. Instead of managing piecemeal security solutions, the comprehensive approach provides:
- Consistent security policies across all departments — or custom security rules for specific groups if desired
- Simplified compliance with regulations like HIPAA, GLBA, and FERPA
- Minimal to no user training required
- Fewer security emergencies and data exposure incidents
Organizations of all sizes look to the Virtru Gateway for simple, across-the-board data security for their teams. One FinTech company described it like this:
"The value that Virtru adds is ease of use and encryption that works right ‘out of the box.’ I can just set this up, deploy this, and then not have to worry about it going forward. And, as a small startup with a very small security team, that is a luxury that not many products deliver on."
This standardized approach transforms data protection from a constant concern — prone to human error — to an automated, systematic process that simply runs in the background.
Protect Zendesk, Salesforce, and Other SaaS Application Workflows
The Virtru Gateway takes enterprise-wide protection to another level with its versatility: Companies use it to protect their email applications, but they can also integrate it with CRM and Customer Service apps, like Salesforce and Zendesk, to automatically secure emails flowing in and out of those channels. This powerful capability means:
- Hybrid email environments get platform-agnostic security for emails and files sent via Gmail, O365, and on-prem Azure.
- All endpoints are covered, including mobile devices, without any action required by the user.
- Communications from SaaS applications like Salesforce and Zendesk receive the same level of security
- Sensitive information is automatically detected and encrypted based on customizable rules
- Users don't need to do anything. Furthermore, recipients don’t have to create any new accounts or passwords to access shared information. Instead, they use their existing Microsoft or Google accounts to authenticate.
“It’s huge to have your entire domain protected,” said Jill Emerson, System Administrator and Member at Team Rehabilitation Physical Therapy, which has a network of clinics across the South and Midwest.
“We're in healthcare; we're a physical therapy company, and to have that level of advanced data protection without having to think about it, that’s priceless. Between Virtru’s email security and the Virtru Secure Share integration for Zendesk, our most common and highest-volume collaboration workflows can remain secure.”
You only have to get hacked once. It only takes one bad apple. I've experienced that before. So, it speaks volumes to now have encryption across the organization. I can sleep better at night."
This frictionless security ensures adoption without disrupting productivity—employees simply work as usual while the system handles protection behind the scenes.
Domain-Wide Security Lightens the Load
The best security solutions are those that provide maximum protection with minimum disruption. Domain-wide Virtru deployment achieves this balance by creating a comprehensive safety net of security that works intelligently in the background.
Ready to explore how a domain-wide Virtru deployment could transform your organization's approach to data security, and free up your team’s precious IT resources? Contact us today to learn more about implementing a comprehensive security strategy that protects your data wherever it goes.
