10 Minute Tips & Tricks with J. Peter Bruzzese – AIP: Rights Management – Do Not Forward

In this lesson, we’ll look at the abilities that we have with Azure Information Protection to utilize rights management. That allows you to put certain restrictions on an email for the recipient and those restrictions are initially established through several prebuilt templates that are in place: Do Not Forward, Confidential and Confidential View-Only. In this lesson, we will focus on the Do Not Forward feature.

So when you send a message with Do Not Forward attached under Rights Management, only the recipients of the email or document will be able to view and reply. They cannot forward it. They cannot share it with other people. They cannot print it. In fact, if the email comes into Outlook and the individual tries to even take a snapshot of it, using either print screen or the snipping tool, it won’t allow them to do that. Now, if it goes to a browser-based email through Outlook on the Web or Gmail, the system doesn’t have the ability to protect from a screenshot.

But if it does go through Outlook itself, it will protect you from a screenshot. So, let’s see how this actually works if we click new message and we send it to our two recipients again. And we’ll indicate that this email includes sensitive information, and we’ll put something in the body of the email simply to avoid sending a blank email. So here we’re going to send it to these two different individuals, and ultimately, we’re going to change the setting from Encrypt to Do Not Forward.

We let the recipient know right away what cannot be done even if they try, keep in mind however, this is a deterrent. It’s not a preventative, so it’s not to say that it’s impossible for the email to be captured. However, it will prevent the accidental forwarding or printing of emails that are sensitive in nature if we click send.

Let’s jump over to Outlook now and see how we would perform the same task through the Outlook application. From within the Outlook application, if we wanted to send an email and make it so that it cannot be forwarded, or printed, or screen captured from within Windows. If it’s on the Outlook application, we would click New Email, and then notice right here at the top Do Not Forward that’s one option. Another option is to go to Permission. A third option is to go to File, Set Permissions and Do Not Forward. And, in all three cases, if you select it, it says recipients can read this message, but cannot forward print or copy content.

So what does this email look like to a recipient? Well, let’s check out Heather Fremont’s inbox. Here we see, she received a second email from Travis Walker. The first one we sent in the first lesson with the encryption, now this one produces a black screen, and this isn’t a glitch, if you’re seeing a black screen right now, that’s because even though I’m able to see the email message, the recording solution I’m using has just been blacked out. Even though it showed up in the preview pane, and I was able to see the message there. Because I tried to open the message, it just blacked out whatever tools I’m using to prevent me from recording the email message and we’ll see in a moment how the same is true at the snipping tool. Now I can still see the email message just fine. Here, you could see my mouse, I’ll read the message to you and I’ll read what’s in the instructions for the message.

Do not forward recipients can read this message, but cannot forward print or copy content. Well let’s say I want to forward it so I click forward, and notice Outlook blocks me, it says “You cannot perform this action permission to this message is restricted”. Okay, I appreciate that. What if I’m looking at this in Outlook, and let’s say I want to copy this message, so I’m going to use the snipping tool. Let’s open the snipping tool. All right and here’s the snipping tool, so I’m going to make a copy of this email. I click New, and look at that. I can’t see anything. Do you see how powerful this feature is? The rights management actually takes control of your system to prevent you from either screen capturing or recording the message itself. Now that’s not to say I couldn’t use my cell phone to take a picture of the message. There’s only so much this can do, but again, it’s a deterrent not a preventative.

Well, what about a do not forward message for Gmail? Let’s take a look. All right, so here we can see we got the second message from Travis Walker, and just like in the previous message that was encrypted. We’re not shown the message directly. Instead, what we’re shown is the option to read the message, we click read the message. And we can click sign in with a one-time passcode. Let’s get the code. And notice again. We’re given a special page. That’s been established just for this message and so I can read the message. But if I go over here. I cannot forward the message and I cannot print the message. The options are not even available to me, I can reply to it, but nothing else. Now, what, if I wanted to take a screenshot of this well because it’s in a browser. We actually don’t have the ability to block the screenshot of this page.

So if we open up the snipping tool again, and if we select New. This time I can select the information on the page. So again, it is a deterrent, not a preventative. But as you can see rights management is very effective at preventing accidental forwarding printing or copying of this sensitive content.

We hope you found this informative thanks for watching and will see you in the next lesson.