As expected for quite a while, emails purporting to reveal alleged naughtiness at a major bank have been released today. A bank spokesman says "We are confident that his extravagant assertions are untrue".

The BBC report concludes…  “Firms are increasingly concerned about the prospect of disgruntled staff taking caches of sensitive e-mails with them when they leave, said Rami Habal, of security firm Proofpoint.

"You can't do anything about people copying the content," he said.

But firms can put measures in place, such as revoking encryption keys, which means stolen e-mails become unreadable, he added.”

Actually, there is something you can do to guard against copying. While traditional encryption lets authorised recipients make unprotected copies long before you revoke the keys, Oracle IRM provides encryption AND guards against unprotected copies being made. Recipients can be authorised to save protected copies, and cut-and-paste within the scope of a protected workflow or email thread – but can be prevented from saving unprotected copies or pasting to unprotected files and emails. 

The IRM audit trail would also help track down attempts to open the protected emails and documents by unauthorised individuals within or beyond your perimeter.