Businesses in New Jersey and all over the country are struggling to stay afloat in this challenging economy. They are looking for new ways to safeguard confidential company data in order to prevent competitors from stealing proprietary information. Popular telecommunications company AT&T has created a unique email system that is designed to prevent others from forwarding emailed sensitive information to others.
Normally, once a person sends an email to someone, he or she has no control over the email message or its contents. The recipient can do what he or she pleases with the information, including deleting the email or forwarding the email to others. The forwarding of the message is often when proprietary information gets leaked to others. This puts the company at risk.
AT&T's new system aims to prevent this through technology that allows the sender of the email to continue to control the email - even after it is sent. For example, the message can be set to expire at a certain time. It can also self-destruct after the recipient has replied, preventing the recipient from forwarding the email to others. If the email does happen to be forwarded, additional controls allow the sender to delete any forwards, replies and copies.
In order for this system to work, AT&T's employees and vendors all would need to have the proper software installed on their computers. Although this may seem a little far-fetched, it's actually not unheard of in a corporate environment.
Competitors will go to great lengths to find out pricing and customer information from a company. That's why with AT&T's email system, information sent to vendors and employees stays within the company and prevent others from gaining access to the very type of sensitive data that can destroy a company.
Source: Forbes, " AT&T's System Can 'Self-Destruct' Emails After They've Been Sent -- And Even Read," Matt Hickey, June 30, 2013