New Outlook option: convenient or a data breach in the making?

When Microsoft introduces something new in Outlook, many people think, “Handy!” But some features are just a little too handy … and can unintentionally lead to risks you’d rather avoid.

A recent example: you can now easily save an e-mail as .EML or .MSG.

Outlook email save as EML or MSG

When someone leaves … who shuts it down?

Specifically, what does that mean?

That means anyone with access to Outlook can download an entire email (including attachments) and store it locally. Consider:

❌ An employee saves an email with customer data
❌ Puts it on his desktop or USB stick
❌ Sends it via private email to a colleague

Without your knowledge.
Without any control.
Without logging.

Why is this a problem?

Because sensitive information ends up outside your secure Microsoft 365 environment. And as soon as that happens, you lose both visibility and control:

You don’t know who downloaded what
You can’t control where it goes
And you don’t have an audit trail on incidents

What is the biggest risk?

We asked our followers what they think is the biggest risk of this feature. The results:

🟦 50% says: Lack of awareness
🟦 21% says: Anyone can download emails
🟦 21% says: No control where it ends up
🟦 8% says: No clear policy

So awareness is crucial. Because even with policy and technology, people often remain the weakest link.

What can you do about this?

🔹 Discuss this option with your team
🔹 Where possible, limit storing emails outside the cloud
🔹 Implement policies and awareness training
🔹 Monitor for anomalous behavior with tools in Microsoft 365

Or better yet, get proper advice on this. So that you don’t take action only after a data breach.