Outbound Filtering Policy

By scanning all outbound messages, you can ensure that all email leaving your organization is legitimate, virus free and does not leak private or sensitive information from inside the organization.

Email Gateway Defense sets default outbound rate limits; senders and IP addresses cannot be exempted. See Outbound Rate Control for more information.

The following policies are applied to all outbound mail by default:

• Scanning for viruses and intent

• Scanning and scoring for spam content

• If a virus or spam is discovered in an outbound message, the message is not delivered; however, the administrator can manually deliver mail caught for spam.

Outbound filtering options are configured on the Outbound Settings pages and are different from those for inbound filtering, including:

• Optional encryption for secure message transmission.

• Data Leak Prevention (DLP) filtering using pre-defined patterns such as credit card number, social security number, driver's license or HIPAA medical terms, to block, quarantine or encrypt outbound messages. Exceptions to DLP block/quarantine policy can be created for emails containing phone numbers and/or street addresses. See the Outbound Settings > Content Policies page for details.

• Outbound Quarantine and quarantine notifications, enabling administrators to deliver, reject, delete or export outbound messages from senders within the organization.

Any outbound mail with ATP that relays through Email Gateway Defense will go through a limited scan for well-known, pre-existing virus types. This method balances security with speed of delivery for your corporate correspondence. More sophisticated attacks often arise from account takeovers in your employee’s inbox. These attacks can largely be prevented through Account Takeover Protection.

For more information on inbound mail filtering with ATP, see Understanding Advanced Threat Protection.