Email Confidentiality Detection via Sender Recipient Address Analysis
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Solution Overview
Problem
Companies face challenges in monitoring and controlling the transfer of confidential information from corporate email accounts to personal email accounts, which can indicate potential misuse or data leakage.
Innovation Solution
A system and method that detect emails sent from corporate email accounts to personal email accounts by analyzing sender and recipient addresses, usernames, and domain names, flagging suspicious messages for further review.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If a company monitors and controls email transfers from corporate to personal accounts, then intellectual property protection is improved, but system complexity and processing overhead increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the email monitoring task into distinct functional modules: an extraction module that pulls sender/recipient information from emails, a comparison module that checks this information against stored company email patterns, and a flagging module that marks suspicious transfers. This segmentation allows each module to perform a specific function efficiently, reducing overall system complexity while maintaining comprehensive monitoring capability.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces an intermediary database that stores company email patterns and sender/recipient information. This intermediary layer acts as a mediator between the email system and the monitoring logic, allowing the system to compare email transfers against stored patterns without requiring complex real-time analysis, thereby simplifying the monitoring architecture.
2Measurement precision
If the system processes millions of emails to detect confidential information transfers, then detection accuracy is improved, but processing time and resource consumption increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent performs preliminary actions by extracting and storing company email patterns, sender information, and recipient information in advance in a database. This pre-processing allows the system to quickly compare incoming emails against stored patterns during actual monitoring, significantly reducing processing time while maintaining high detection accuracy across millions of emails.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent extracts only the essential identifying information (sender/recipient email addresses and usernames) from emails for comparison purposes, rather than analyzing the entire email content. This selective extraction reduces the data volume that needs to be processed while maintaining detection accuracy, enabling efficient processing of large email volumes.
3Difficulty of detecting and measuring
If the system analyzes sender and recipient addresses to identify personal email accounts, then detection capability is improved, but false positives may increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies partial action by implementing a multi-stage comparison process: first comparing against company email patterns, then against stored sender/recipient information. This staged approach allows the system to filter out obvious legitimate emails early in the process, reducing false positives while maintaining high detection capability for actual confidential transfers.
Data Source
AI summary
Systems and methods are disclosed for detecting confidential information emails. In accordance with one implementation, a method is provided for detecting confidential information emails. The method includes obtaining a sender address of an electronic message, the sender address comprising a first username and a first domain name, and obtaining at least one recipient address of the electronic message, the recipient address comprising a second username and a second domain name. The method also includes determining whether the recipient address and the sender address are different addresses of a user, and based on the determination, flagging the electronic message.