Stop sensitive data leaving with data protection rules

DLP (data loss prevention) looks for sensitive data when someone sends an email or shares a file, and reacts the way a rule says. Find it in Admin, Compliance, DLP. Creating and changing rules is part of the Business plan.

Create a rule

1. Choose New rule and give it a Name.
2. Pick what to look for:
   • Payment cards: real card numbers only. Random 16-digit numbers like order IDs are ignored.
   • IBAN bank account numbers.
   • Passwords and access keys: well-known key formats, private keys and text like password = ….
   • National IDs: tick only the countries you work with, since each adds patterns that could match unrelated numbers.
   • Keywords, comma-separated, such as Project Falcon, confidential. Whole words, any case.
   • Custom pattern for your own number formats. Leave it empty if you do not know regular expressions.
3. Choose the Action: Notify admins only, Warn the sender, Require a reason, or Block.
4. Choose where it applies: Outgoing mail (subject, text and attachment names; attached file contents are not read) and Drive & Docs sharing (the text of Docs and Sheets, small text files and other file names).
5. Optionally switch on Only when leaving the workspace, so it checks only email to outside people and files shared with outsiders or by public link.
6. Optionally switch on Notify admins for every match.
7. Choose Save rule. It is on within about a minute.

Test before you rely on it

Choose Test: paste sample text and see what would be caught. Nothing is saved or sent. You can Test the new rule or Test saved rules.

Incidents

Incidents lists each time a rule matched: who, where and what happened, for example warned then sent anyway. The sensitive data itself is never stored, only a masked sample.

Manage rules

Turn a rule off or delete it from its row.

Tips

• Start with Notify admins only to see how often a rule fires, then tighten it.
• Warn first, block later.