OutlookA healthcare worker wants to send a discharge letter to a patient. She opens Outlook, starts typing and pastes in the name, national ID number and diagnosis details from the patient file. She selects Zivver encryption and clicks Send. The email is secured.
Three streets away, an HR officer sends an appraisal email to a colleague. At the bottom of the email, left there by mistake, are the wrong name, someone else's salary and a passage about a conflict with another team member. Nobody flagged it for encryption. It has already gone.
Both employees use professional email. Both think their workflow is secure. But the risk lay elsewhere: not in the encryption, but in what the email said.
Two tools, two moments
Zivver and BeeSensible are sometimes mentioned in the same breath when secure email comes up. They do very different things.
Zivver is a service for secure email. It encrypts messages, offers two-factor authentication for recipients, scans attachments for sensitive content and lets you recall sent emails. Zivver protects the email after you click Send.
BeeSensible uses a browser extension to highlight sensitive data while you type. It picks out names, account numbers, national ID numbers, medical terms and other categories in the draft window, so you can mask or remove them before you send. BeeSensible protects the moment before sending.
That one difference, before or after sending, decides what you use each of them for.
| Aspect | Zivver | BeeSensible |
|---|---|---|
| Type of tool | Email security service | Browser extension |
| When it acts | After sending (encryption, recall) | Before sending (highlighting, awareness) |
| Integration | Outlook plugin, Gmail, web portal | Chrome and Edge extension, works in the web apps you already use |
| What it solves | Unauthorised access to sent emails | Sending sensitive data by accident |
| Recipient experience | Secure link, verification, portal | No difference, normal email |
| Main risk it addresses | Interception and unauthorised access | Human error when sending |
What Zivver does
Zivver, founded in Amsterdam in 2015, has grown into one of the most widely used services for secure email in Dutch healthcare, government and the legal sector. More than 10,000 organisations use Zivver.
Core features
Encryption: Zivver encrypts emails with AES-256 and offers keyless encryption. Recipients do not need to create a Zivver account: they receive a secure link and verify their identity with a one-time code, a password or email verification.
Misdirected email prevention: Zivver scans emails before sending and warns about potential wrong recipients, misuse of CC/BCC and sensitive content in attachments. It does this with machine learning and AI.
Recall: sent emails can be recalled, even after the recipient has received them. There is no time limit and the recipient does not need to confirm.
Large files: Zivver supports secure transfer of files up to 5TB.
Inbound threat protection: Zivver offers protection against incoming threats such as phishing and malware.
Certifications
Zivver has the certifications you would expect in regulated sectors: SOC 2 Type 2, ISO 27001, NEN 7510 (the Dutch standard for information security in healthcare) and Privacy Verified.
The acquisition: what European organisations need to know
In 2024, Zivver was acquired by Kiteworks, a US company. This acquisition has implications for data sovereignty.
As a US company, Kiteworks falls under the CLOUD Act. This law gives US authorities the power to compel companies to provide access to data they manage, even if that data is physically stored in Europe. For organisations using Zivver for patient data, legal files or government communications, this is something to weigh.
Zivver has responded by emphasising that data remains confidential and that it is working with Kiteworks to strengthen data sovereignty, including through a Private Data Network initiative. The Dutch Data Protection Authority is reportedly investigating the compliance implications.
This is not a verdict on organisations that choose to keep using Zivver. It is context that IT managers and privacy officers need in order to make an informed decision.
What happens before sending
BeeSensible's browser extension for Chrome and Edge highlights sensitive data while you type in web applications. The extension works in email (Outlook on the web, Gmail), AI tools (ChatGPT, Claude), chat (Slack, WhatsApp Web) and some social networks.
Core features
Detection while typing: the text is sent to BeeSensible's EU detection service, where analysis runs in memory and the text is discarded after detection. None of it is stored. Detected sensitive data is highlighted in the text field.
User action: the employee sees which data has been detected and chooses: mask it with a label like [NAME1], or remove it. On its own, BeeSensible does not block sending or change your text. The organisation can set masking on paste, attach or send to "On by default" or "Always on".
Dashboard for administrators: administrators see patterns by category and application without seeing the text or individual users. There is no per-employee breakdown anywhere in the dashboard.
No content storage: the text that employees type is not stored. Only counts and categories are retained for reporting.
Architecture
- With the desktop app, detection runs entirely on the device: no cloud
- For browser-only use, the API is hosted on Scaleway in the Netherlands
- Cloud detection runs on Hetzner in Germany
- All cloud processing takes place within the EU
- No external AI services are called
The difference in practice
Scenario 1: The misdirected email
Marieke sends an email to jan.jansen@client.com. She meant jan.jansen@partner.com. The email contains project budgets and the name of someone involved in an internal conflict.
With Zivver: the email is sent encrypted. Jan at the client receives a secure link. If Marieke discovers the error before Jan opens the link, she can recall the email. If Jan has already opened the email, the data has been seen.
With BeeSensible: BeeSensible highlights the sensitive content (names, amounts) while Marieke types. It does not check the email address; that is the email client's job. But Marieke does see what is sensitive in her draft before she sends.
Zivver is the safety net once the mistake has been made; BeeSensible helps you spot it sooner. Neither checks the address itself.
Scenario 2: The prompt with too much context
Bas pastes a client file into ChatGPT to get a summary. The file contains a national ID number, a medical history and the name of a doctor.
With Zivver: Zivver does nothing, because this is not an email.
With BeeSensible: BeeSensible highlights the national ID number, the name and the medical terms in the ChatGPT input field. Bas sees what is sensitive and can choose to mask or remove it before he sends the prompt.
That is the biggest difference between the two: Zivver is built for email, while BeeSensible also works in AI tools, chat and the other web apps where people type sensitive data.
Scenario 3: The sensitive attachment
Sandra sends an email with an Excel attachment. The spreadsheet contains hidden columns with salary data she did not intend to share.
With Zivver: Zivver scans attachments for sensitive content and can warn that there is sensitive data in the attachment. The email is sent encrypted.
With BeeSensible: nothing happens in the email, because attachments in an email client are not checked. Had Sandra opened the file in BeeSensible first, hidden sheets and comments would have been checked too, but that is a deliberate step.
Here Zivver clearly wins: scanning email attachments automatically is not something BeeSensible does.
Scenario 4: The daily email routine
A customer service team sends dozens of emails a day to clients. Not every email contains special category personal data, but now and then an ID number, an account number or a medical detail slips through.
With Zivver: the team must decide for each email whether Zivver encryption is needed. That takes discipline and a judgement call every time.
With BeeSensible: BeeSensible automatically highlights sensitive data in the text, whether or not the email is encrypted. The team sees it when it matters.
BeeSensible works in the background; Zivver asks for a deliberate choice every time.
Scenario 5: The case file before it goes into AI
A support agent has a ten-page PDF case file and needs a two-line summary from ChatGPT. Instead of pasting the whole file into the prompt, she opens it in BeeSensible first.
With Zivver: Zivver has no part to play here. Nothing is being emailed; this is a document on its way to an AI tool.
With BeeSensible: the file opens in the extension's side panel, in the dashboard or in the desktop app; the names, national ID numbers and case details are highlighted on the page, and she unticks anything that should stay before exporting a redacted copy to paste into the prompt.
