Policy Guide › Protecting Emails › Integration With E-mail Servers › Server-side versus Client-side

Server-side versus Client-side

CA Data Protection supports both client-side and server-side email integration. Specifically, it can integrate with Microsoft Outlook or Lotus Notes on client machines and with Microsoft Exchange, IIS SMTP, Domino, Sendmail and Postfix email servers. But there are two key differences between these email integration methods:

First and most important, the range of available control interventions is slightly more limited under server-side integration. Specifically:

• CA Data Protection can intervene by blocking an email and sending a notification message to the sender; or in the case of emails that generate warning or inform events, it can simply send a notification message to the sender. However, it cannot display warning dialogs that require user interaction (unlike under client-side integration, when CA Data Protection can display dialogs that require user interaction).
• With Microsoft Exchange server or IIS SMTP agents, CA Data Protection can also intervene by sending an interactive warning email to the sender. The user can then reply to the message to disregard the warning, or do nothing to automatically heed the warning and the agent sends or does not send the email accordingly. This is possible for emails that generated warning or inform events and requires specific configuration on the machine hosting the agent.

Second, under server-side integration CA Data Protection always applies triggers from the sender’s perspective (that is, it applies triggers for outgoing emails). This approach avoids unnecessary duplication of analysis and processing. These triggers are defined in the sender’s user policy or, if the sender is not a recognized CA Data Protection user, in the policies for the Unknown Internal Sender or External Sender. This contrasts with client-side integration where CA Data Protection can apply both incoming email triggers (defined in the recipient’s policy) and outgoing email triggers (defined in the sender’s policy).

More information:

Configure the Local Machine Policy