In an effort to reduce internal email administration costs, a company is determining whether to outsource its email to a managed service provider that provides email, spam, and malware protection…

Data separation by the MSP addresses isolation between different MSP tenants but does not prevent employees from emailing intellectual property to external recipients.

Encrypting communications protects data in transit from eavesdropping but does not prevent an authorized user from sending sensitive intellectual property outbound via email.

DLP technology inspects outbound email content and attachments for sensitive data patterns - such as confidential documents, trade secrets, or PII - and can block or quarantine messages before they leave the organization's control. This directly addresses the risk that employees might inadvertently or intentionally email intellectual property through a provider that has broader visibility into message content than an internal system.

An acceptable use policy and incident response policy are administrative controls that establish rules and procedures but do not technically enforce or prevent data disclosure in real time.