Email continues to be one of the most critical communication channels in enterprise environments—and one of the most common attack vectors for data leaks and phishing attempts. To help organizations strengthen their data protection strategies, IBM MaaS360 has introduced a new enhancement to its Workplace Persona Policy: the Blocked Domain option. This update provides administrators with powerful new controls to manage and restrict email communications with external domains, ensuring sensitive corporate data remains secure and compliant with enterprise policies.
Evolution of Domain Management in MaaS360
Previously, MaaS360 offered administrators an Allowlist feature within the Workplace Persona Policy. This allowed organizations to specify trusted domains from which users could send or receive emails. While effective, this model often required admins to maintain long and dynamic lists of approved domains — a process that could become cumbersome in large enterprises with frequent partner or vendor changes.
The new Blocked Domain feature reverses this approach. Instead of defining which domains are allowed, administrators can now specify which domains should be blocked or restricted. This makes it easier to enforce security policies by identifying only the risky or unauthorized domains, rather than continuously maintaining exhaustive allowlists.
Key Enhancements in Workplace Persona Policy
IBM MaaS360 enhances the Security settings in Workplace Persona Policy by introducing the Blocked Domain option to manage Restrict attachment Forwarding, Manage Email Restrictions to External Domain and Manage remote image in emails from External Domain. It helps administrators to allow, to warn or to block the users in sending or receiving emails and attachments.
In the Workplace Persona Policy, users can set a comma-separated list of allowed email domains. If an email is sent to a domain outside this list, a warning pop up alerts the user.
- Restrict Attachment Forwarding
Navigation: Workplace Persona policy > Email > Security > Secure Mail Security Settings
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- Manage Email Restrictions to External Domain
Navigation: Workplace Persona policy > Email > Security > Secure Mail Security Settings
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- Mails From External domains
Navigation: Workplace Persona policy > Email > Security > Mails from external domains
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