Case study
TypeSentry
Enterprise pilotSecurity and compliance scanning for Outlook and Word
Catches sensitive data, the wrong recipient and policy violations before Send is pressed. It never blocks the email: even if the scan fails, the mail goes out.
- 0 blocks
- the email goes out even if the scan fails
- 2 modes
- client-side or server-side scanning, per plan
- Per tenant
- every customer with its own rules and install
Why it started
Data loss prevention in enterprise email is a category priced per user, so in an organisation of a few hundred people the conversation usually stalls on cost before it ever reaches the solution. The second constraint is the rules themselves: in off-the-shelf products they follow the vendor's assumptions rather than the organisation's own policy. TypeSentry came out of those two points — a scanner whose seat cost the organisation controls, with rules written against its own policy.
Key decisions
- 01
Fail-open, not up for negotiation
If the scanning service errors, slows down or goes away entirely, the email still goes out and the result comes back empty. A security layer that halts an organisation's communication costs more than the leak it prevents. That decision shaped the rest of the product: every path was built to allow sending when it fails.
- 02
The organisation decides where scanning runs
In client mode rules and whitelists are downloaded and scanning happens on the user's machine, so the mail body never leaves it. In server mode the heavier rules run centrally. What actually slows enterprise purchasing is not price but the question of where content goes — the two modes exist to answer it without saying no.
- 03
A seat is whoever scans, not whoever opens the panel
The licensing unit is a unique user who actually scans; dashboard users are counted separately against a fixed limit. Growing the administration team costs nothing, so price friction never stands in the way of the product spreading inside the organisation.
- 04
Multi-tenancy in the first schema
Tenant isolation, the onboarding flow and rule sets were defined per customer from the start. Selling to the second organisation means creating a record, not rewriting the product.
Where it is today
Today it runs on both Outlook and Word, in enterprise pilot: multi-tenant admin panel, seat-based licensing, day-based proration on upgrades.
The product itself
The feature list, screenshots and documentation live on the product's own site.