Deployment Guide › Known issues › Email Server Agents › Multiple Notifications in Response to a Single Email

Multiple Notifications in Response to a Single Email

When an email activates a control trigger, the sender of the email can sometimes receive multiple warning or notification messages.

This can occur if an email is sent, via an email server with no server agent installed, to multiple recipients whose accounts are hosted on multiple e‑mail servers. In this situation, either of the following scenarios can result in multiple notification messages being sent:

• The email servers hosting the various recipients’ mailboxes each have a server agent installed. Policy is not applied to the email until it reaches the server agents on subsequent email servers. This example is shown opposite.
• The email servers hosting the various recipients’ mailboxes are Exchange Servers that also host their own journals. There will then be multiple copies of the original email, one in each journal on the recipient mailbox servers, plus one in the journal on the sender’s mailbox server. Policy is applied to each of these instances.

To avoid either of the above, we recommend that you install server agents on all server machines in the CA DLP enterprise.

Multiple notification messages

1 A user sends an email and it transits through the email server (1a), undetected. The recipients’ mailboxes (2b and 3b) are on two separate Exchange servers (2a and 3a).

2 and 3 An instance of the email arrives at each email server. Each instance is detected by an email server agent (2c and 3c) and triggers a warning notification.

4 Each email server agent then sends a warning message to the sender.

5 The user receives multiple notification messages in response to a single email.