Helping Clients Navigate Email Security Requirements and Regulatory Obligations

For many Australian small and mid-sized businesses, compliance feels like a burden. It’s regarded as a checkbox exercise driven by legal requirements rather than business value. As a partner, you have the opportunity to reframe this narrative entirely. When approached strategically, compliance becomes a powerful differentiator that strengthens security posture, builds customer trust, and opens new market opportunities. The key is helping your clients see regulatory requirements not as obstacles to overcome, but as frameworks for excellence that enhance their competitive position.

The Privacy and Other Legislation Amendment Act 2024 introduced the most significant overhaul to Australian privacy law in years. Stronger obligations, tougher enforcement powers, and substantially higher penalties have reshaped how organisations must handle personal information. Many provisions are already active, and more reforms are expected throughout 2025.

What does this mean for your clients?

• Privacy breaches can now trigger civil action under the new privacy tort.
• Maximum financial penalties have increased dramatically, reaching into the millions($) for serious interferences with privacy.
• Organisations must demonstrate both technical and organisational measures to protect personal information.
• OAIC expectations for transparency, governance and breach detection have risen.

In short: this isn’t incremental change. This is a fundamental shift in accountability.

And at the centre of this regulatory storm? Email.

Why Email Security Is Now a Compliance Imperative

Email is simultaneously a critical business tool and the single largest source of data breaches in Australia.

Every day, email systems carry personal information, financial records, health data, legal communications, employee details and commercially sensitive material. Yet email remains inherently difficult to control. Mistyped addresses, account compromise, phishing, unauthorised forwarding, poor retention practices, all of these create compliance exposure.

Under APP 11.3, organisations must now show they’ve taken reasonable steps to secure personal information. The OAIC is increasingly explicit about what “reasonable” looks like:

Technical measures

• MFA
• Secure email gateways
• Threat detection
• Logging and monitoring
• Encryption
• Retention and deletion controls

Organisational measures

• Access governance
• Role-based permissions
• Joiner/mover/leaver processes
• Staff training
• Policies and procedures
• Regular reviews and audits

This combination is where many SMBs and mid-sized businesses fall short, and where partners can add immense value.

Notifiable Data Breaches: Email Is Still the Weak Link

The Notifiable Data Breaches (NDB) scheme requires organisations to notify individuals and the OAIC when a breach is likely to cause serious harm. Email-related incidents account for a large portion of NDB notifications, including:

• Misdirected emails
• Stolen passwords or compromised accounts
• Successful phishing attempts
• Improper access by departing employees
• Leaked attachments or forwarded chains

Clients must be able to quickly assess what information was exposed, by whom, and what remedial action is required. Many cannot.

For partners, helping clients meet NDB obligations is a practical, high-impact service, not just a theoretical exercise.

Industry Requirements Create Additional Pressure

Certain sectors face heightened expectations:

Financial Services (APRA CPS 234)

Even for non-APRA SMBs, CPS 234 has become the benchmark for secure email governance.

Healthcare

Health information is extremely sensitive, and even minor email mishandling can trigger serious harm risks.

Professional Services

Legal privilege and confidentiality obligations require stronger controls around retention, access, and encryption.

Retail & E-commerce

Compromised email accounts can expose large volumes of customer data, triggering complex notification requirements.

Partners who understand these nuances instantly increase their advisory value.

How Partners Can Turn Compliance Into Opportunity

The organisations that benefit most from compliance are those that embed it into everyday operations. As a partner, you can help clients take the right steps, and position yourself as an indispensable advisor.

Privacy Act, NDB scheme, contractual requirements, industry-specific standards — many SMBs are unsure which rules affect them. Partners can demystify this quickly.

Go beyond filtering. Show them how compliance maps to concrete actions across:

• Identity management
• Access control
• Threat detection
• Data retention
• Staff training
• Documentation and governance

When clients see the link between requirements and practical controls, the process becomes clear and achievable.

Not every gap has the same impact.

Help clients focus first on controls that prevent:

• Unauthorised access
• Data leakage
• Account compromise
• High-impact breaches

This risk-based approach builds momentum quickly.

This is where MailGuard gives partners a major advantage.

By layering MailGuard with Microsoft 365 Defender or Google, you help clients:

• Block zero-day and AI-generated phishing earlier
• Reduce the risk of credential theft
• Detect suspicious behaviour and account compromise
• Strengthen governance and retention
• Meet privacy and NDB obligations more confidently

The simplicity of MailGuard deployment means partners deliver value fast, without friction.

Compliance is not just about doing the right thing, it’s about proving it.

Partners can help clients maintain documentation such as:

• Policies and procedures
• Access control records
• Training logs
• Breach response plans
• Configuration baselines
• Audit reports

This is where SMBs and mid-sized firms struggle most, and where partners deliver tangible value.

Regulations evolve. Threats evolve. Businesses evolve.

Ongoing compliance reviews, training refreshers, and email governance updates can become recurring revenue streams for partners and keep clients protected.

Why This Matters for Partners

Strong privacy and email governance is becoming a prerequisite for doing business in Australia.

Clients who excel at compliance:

• Win more tenders
• Qualify for enterprise and government contracts
• Build higher levels of customer trust
• Recover faster from incidents
• Reduce the risk of multimillion-dollar penalties

Partners who guide clients through this transition differentiate themselves from competitors and build longer-lasting, higher-value relationships.

Your Role: Trusted Guide Through Complexity

The message for partners is clear: Compliance isn’t just a mandate; it’s a strategic advantage.

By helping clients strengthen their email security and governance, you deliver measurable business outcomes far beyond technical implementation. You help them become more resilient, more competitive, and more trusted.

And with MailGuard as part of your toolkit, you can deliver this value with clarity, confidence and speed.

Keeping Businesses Safe and Secure

Prevention is always better than a cure, and one of the best defences is to encourage businesses to proactively boost their company’s cyber resilience levels to avoid threats landing in inboxes in the first place. The fact that a staggering 94% of malware attacks are delivered by email, makes email an extremely important vector for businesses to fortify.

No one vendor can stop all email threats, so it’s crucial to remind customers that if they are using Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, they should also have a third-party email security specialist in place to mitigate their risk. For example, using a specialist AI-powered email threat detection solution like MailGuard.   

For a few dollars per staff member per month, businesses are protected by MailGuard's specialist, zero-day email security. Special Ops for when speed matters!  Our real-time zero-day, email threat detection amplifies your client’s intelligence, knowledge, security and defence.

MailGuard provides a range of solutions to keep businesses safe, from email filtering to email continuity and archiving solutions. Speak to your clients today to ensure they’re prepared and get in touch with our team to discuss fortifying your client’s cyber resilience.

Talk to us

MailGuard's partner blog is a forum to share information; we want it to be a dialogue. Reach out to us and tell us what your customers need so we can serve you better. You can connect with us on social media or call us and speak to one of our consultants.

Australian partners, please call us on 1300 30 65 10

US partners call 1888 848 2822

UK partners call 0 800 404 8993