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1Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches2Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errors3Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minutePreventing misdelivery starts with one rule: use and disclose only the information needed for an approved purpose, and only to an authorized recipient. Apply that rule to employees, automated workflows and AI agents, then use controls suited to each route—recipient checks and secure delivery for people, narrow permissions and tool limits for agents, and monitoring and incident response across both.
Can one policy cover people and AI agents?
Yes. A shared policy can establish the same authorization logic for every disclosure or data-access decision, without requiring identical procedures or a single universal template. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) says organizations should define the purpose for each stage of processing and use only the personal information needed for that purpose. That principle can govern a person sending a file, a workflow forwarding a record, or an agent retrieving information and calling a tool.
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Make the rule operational by defining what counts as an approved purpose, which recipient classes may receive each sensitivity level, which channels are permitted, and what “minimum necessary” means for common tasks. Then specify how each kind of actor must demonstrate authorization before information moves. These are governance choices to fit your organization and obligations; the cited authorities do not prescribe one policy document for every organization.
Use the same authorization questions for every route
- Purpose: What approved task requires this information?
- Data: Which fields or documents are actually needed to complete it?
- Recipient: Is the person, organization, service or agent destination authorized for this purpose?
- Channel: Is the route appropriate for the information’s sensitivity?
- Evidence: Can you later establish who or what accessed, received or transmitted the information?
A correct record does not make a disclosure safe if it is routed to the wrong person, shared mailbox, service, tool or downstream agent. Treat routing and authorization as part of handling the data—not as a final check after the content is ready to send.
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How do we stop employees from sending sensitive information to the wrong person?
Build a deliberate recipient check into the disclosure workflow, then make secure delivery and traceability part of the same process. ICO guidance on supplying information offers practical safeguards, including using a named email account rather than a shared mailbox, marking information for the named recipient, and sending any password through a separate channel. These are options to consider, not universal legal mandates.
Before sending
- Confirm the intended recipient and verify the address or destination against a reliable, current contact record. Do not rely solely on a display name or a previously used autocomplete entry for a sensitive disclosure.
- Check that the recipient is authorized for the stated purpose and that the material contains no more information than that purpose requires.
- Choose a delivery method appropriate to the sensitivity. For sensitive individual information, consider a named account rather than a shared mailbox, and mark the material for the named recipient.
- If access is protected by a password, send the password separately from the information it unlocks.
After sending
Keep a record that lets the organization determine who received or accessed the disclosed information. A delivery record alone may not establish access; capture the relevant access information where the channel supports it. Keep contact information current so a later review or investigation is not undermined by stale recipient details.
These checks address different failure points: verifying the destination helps prevent a misaddressed disclosure, secure delivery limits exposure in transit or to unintended viewers, and access records support investigation. No single check substitutes for the others.
How should we control what an AI agent can access or send?
Give each agent a defined purpose and limit its access to the information, tools and data stores justified by that task. The ICO connects this approach with least privilege. An agent should not inherit broad access merely because its operator, service account or connected application has it.
Constrain access and action
- Define the agent’s task and the permitted information needed to complete it.
- Approve a narrow set of tools, databases and destinations; review whether each is necessary for the task.
- Where appropriate, require a human permission prompt before the agent accesses personal information, and mask information that the task does not need in identifiable form.
- Record which tools and resources the agent called, together with enough context to understand the authorization and purpose governing the action.
- Review permissions when the task, connected tools or data scope changes, rather than treating an initial approval as indefinite.
Agent workflows can create risks beyond a single mistaken send. Inaccurate personal information may propagate through connected tools or other agents, and multi-agent flows can make oversight and accountability harder. Map the downstream path: identify which components can read, transform, transmit or act on information, and where a human review or stop point is appropriate.
Account for untrusted inputs
Retrieved content and tool outputs may be untrusted inputs. A NIST National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE) page summarizing public comments on an agentic identity and authorization concept paper reports commenters’ concern that direct and indirect prompt injection could exploit agents acting on such inputs. This is a concern raised in a project comment process, not an adopted NIST standard or a quantified finding for every deployment. It is a reason to test how an agent handles instructions embedded in retrieved material and whether its permissions prevent an untrusted input from triggering an unauthorized disclosure or action.
What controls should people and agents share?
Shared governance should lead to channel-specific enforcement. NIST describes data loss prevention (DLP) as a program spanning management, discovery, monitoring and protection—not merely a product purchase. Its account includes incident reporting and remediation within management. That framing is useful because a policy cannot prevent misdelivery unless the organization knows where sensitive information is, can observe relevant movement, can enforce its rules and can learn from failures.
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- Management: Assign ownership, define handling rules and establish incident reporting and remediation.
- Discovery: Inventory sensitive information and understand where it is stored, processed and shared.
- Monitoring: Observe movement through the channels that matter to your risks, including relevant collaboration, endpoint, repository, API, agent-tool and external-service paths.
- Protection: Match enforcement to policy: warn, require confirmation, restrict, quarantine, encrypt or block as appropriate.
Prioritize the routes with the greatest potential for loss instead of trying to apply every control everywhere at once. NIST advises considering factors such as past breaches, communication and data volumes, likelihood of breach, and how many users can access a path. A control that interrupts legitimate work may drive workarounds or create operational harm, so usability is part of protection—not an optional afterthought.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.How should we compare technical approaches?
There is no single best architecture established by the cited sources. Compare capabilities against your actual workflows and risks rather than assuming that a DLP tool, identity control or agent platform alone will prevent misdelivery.
| Comparison area | What to establish |
|---|---|
| Coverage | Whether the approach covers relevant email and collaboration, repositories, endpoints, APIs, agent tools and external services. |
| Recipient and data identification | Whether it can reliably identify sensitive information and the intended recipient in the workflows where you need controls. |
| Enforcement | Whether it can warn, require confirmation, restrict, quarantine, encrypt or block in line with policy. |
| Agent authorization | Whether agent identities, allowed tools, data scope and task duration can be constrained and reviewed. |
| Auditability | Whether records show who or what accessed information, which tools were called and what policy context governed the action. |
| Operational fit | How false blocks, worker friction, performance, scale and exception handling affect legitimate work. |
Ask vendors or internal system owners to demonstrate these functions against representative tasks and failure cases, including an incorrect recipient, an overbroad agent request and an attempted transfer to an unapproved destination. The comparison criteria are evaluation questions, not a vendor ranking.
How do we put the policy into practice?
- Map the routes. Inventory sensitive data and trace how it moves through people, workflows, agents, tools and external destinations. Identify where a recipient can be chosen or changed.
- Rank the risks. Start with routes associated with past incidents, high data or communication volumes, higher likelihood of breach, or broad user access. Include agent connections that can pass information onward.
- Set purpose and recipient rules. Define approved purposes, minimum necessary information, authorized recipient classes and allowed channels. Apply the same decision logic to human and agent actions.
- Fit controls to the route. Use recipient verification and secure delivery for human disclosures; narrow permissions, approved tools, appropriate permission gates and masking for agents; and shared monitoring, protection and audit controls where information crosses both.
- Test legitimate work and failure cases. Check that controls catch misroutes and unauthorized access without unnecessarily interrupting valid tasks. Review exceptions and adjust where they create unsafe workarounds or excessive friction.
- Prepare to investigate and remediate. Establish incident reporting, preserve relevant access and tool-call records, and define how to contain a disclosure, correct inaccurate downstream information and review the control that failed.
The ICO’s “Supplying information” guidance says it is under review following changes made by the Data (Use and Access) Act. Treat it as ICO guidance rather than legal advice, and confirm the applicable requirements for your organization and circumstances.
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