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Proofpoint Email Protection

Proofpoint Email Protection

Overview

What is Proofpoint Email Protection?

Proofpoint Email Protection is available as an on-premise or cloud based solution and blocks unwanted, malicious and impostor emails with granular search capabilities and visibility into all messages. Outbound controls include encryption and data loss prevention, while continuity capabilities ensure…

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Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

Proofpoint Email Protection is widely used across organizations for its robust capabilities in email encryption, URL protection, and virus …
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Proofpoint Email Protection Review

9 out of 10
August 30, 2020
We use Proofpoint for all our inbound and outbound email protection. We have stopped spam from entering our network. Typically users do …
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Great tool

9 out of 10
August 14, 2020
Incentivized
Proofpoint Email Protection is being used by us as an email gateway kind of thing. It filters and gets rid of unwanted emails (SPAM and …
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Protection at its best

9 out of 10
December 18, 2019
Incentivized
It is being used across the whole organization; it helps in blocking suspicious URLs and helps us in keeping safe from phishing campaigns. …
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Popular Features

View all 7 features
  • Anti-malware (76)
    10.0
    100%
  • Customizability (75)
    10.0
    100%
  • Threat Detection (75)
    9.0
    90%
  • Management Tools (74)
    8.0
    80%

Reviewer Pros & Cons

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Pricing

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What is Proofpoint Email Protection?

Proofpoint Email Protection is available as an on-premise or cloud based solution and blocks unwanted, malicious and impostor emails with granular search capabilities and visibility into all messages. Outbound controls include encryption and data loss prevention, while continuity capabilities…

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

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Features

Secure Email Gateway

Secure email gateway software prevents the transmission of emails that contravene company policy or contain malware, phishing attacks, spam or other unwanted emails

9.2
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Product Details

What is Proofpoint Email Protection?

Proofpoint Email Protection is available as an on-premise or cloud based solution and blocks unwanted, malicious and impostor emails with granular search capabilities and visibility into all messages. Outbound controls include encryption and data loss prevention, while continuity capabilities ensure business communications can continue as normal in the event of an email outage.
With Proofpoint's Email Protection, you can protect your people, data, and brand from today’s threats with:
  • The ability to detect BEC or malware-free threats using our machine learning impostor classifier (Stateful Composite Scoring Service)
  • Nearly unlimited email routing capabilities utilizing our advanced email firewall.
  • Robust reporting and email tracking/tracing using Smart Search.
  • TAP, DLP and Encryption built into the same console providing a single pain of glass for management purposes.
  • Unwanted email management that allows users to decide which emails they would like to see in their inbox.

Proofpoint Email Protection Features

  • Supported: Ability to detect BEC or malware-free threats using our machine learning impostor classifier (Stateful Composite Scoring Service)
  • Supported: Nearly unlimited email routing capabilities utilizing our advanced email firewall.
  • Supported: Robust reporting and email tracking/tracing using Smart Search.
  • Supported: TAP, DLP and Encryption are built into the same console providing a single pain of glass for management purposes.
  • Supported: Unwanted email management allows users to decide which emails they would like to see in their inbox.

Proofpoint Email Protection Video

Proofpoint Email Protection: Protecting Against Impostor Email Threats

Proofpoint Email Protection Technical Details

Deployment TypesOn-premise, Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsWindows, Linux, Mac
Mobile ApplicationNo
Supported CountriesUnited States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Australia, Japan
Supported LanguagesArabic, Bulgarian, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian (Bahasa), Italian, Japanese, Kazakh, Korean, Malay, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazilian), Romanian, Russian, Sinhala, Slovak, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tamil, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu, Vietnamese

Proofpoint Email Protection Downloadables

Frequently Asked Questions

Cisco Cloud Email Security, Symantec Encryption, and Mimecast Advanced Email Security are common alternatives for Proofpoint Email Protection.

Reviewers rate Anti-malware and Customizability highest, with a score of 10.

The most common users of Proofpoint Email Protection are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(211)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

Proofpoint Email Protection is widely used across organizations for its robust capabilities in email encryption, URL protection, and virus scanning. Users have praised the software for its granular control over inbound and outbound email, allowing for detailed overview and management. The software effectively filters all incoming and outgoing emails, surpassing the capabilities of previous mail filter solutions by significantly reducing malware, viruses, and spam. One notable feature that users appreciate is the impostor detection, which has proven to be highly effective in reducing attacks targeting executives for gift cards and other goods.

Proofpoint seamlessly integrates with Office 365, offering an added layer of protection by preventing phishing and spoofed emails from reaching users. It acts as a primary spam filter, providing daily digests of filtered mail to users. For clients who prefer not to operate a dedicated email gateway, Proofpoint serves as a shared service, delivering robust perimeter defense for all email traffic. The software's ability to block communication based on domain, content, and malicious sites or links has proven successful in stopping the spread of malicious phishing content. Overall, Proofpoint Email Protection serves as a dependable email gateway that protects both inbound and outbound email users from malicious threats while efficiently minimizing spam and junk emails.

Granular control of inbound and outbound email: Users have been impressed with the granular control offered by Proofpoint for managing both inbound and outbound email. Several reviewers have mentioned that they appreciate the ability to configure rules for mail, which allows them to tailor their email management according to their specific needs.

Extensive spam detection capabilities: Many users have praised Proofpoint's extensive spam detection capabilities. They have mentioned that the software is highly effective in detecting and stopping spam, with some stating that it can detect and stop around 99% of spam. This feature has been greatly appreciated by reviewers as it helps maintain a clean inbox.

End-user services and reduced administrative work: Reviewers have highlighted the end-user services provided by Proofpoint as a major advantage. They mention that these services greatly reduce administrative work as users are able to create their own filters and release their own mail. This self-service capability not only saves time but also empowers users to manage their emails effectively.

Confusing and Cumbersome User Interface: Users have found Proofpoint's user interface to be confusing and cumbersome, requiring extra steps and making it difficult to perform tasks quickly. Some users suggest that the UI should be improved for better understanding and easier access to all features. They find the GUI interface confusing and not easy to navigate, with abysmal default settings that make it challenging to effectively filter out unwanted messages. The layout of the email protection, TAP, and TRAP dashboards has been mentioned as inconvenient, prompting users to express a desire for a more modern-looking and streamlined user interface.

Difficulties in Validating DKIM Initiation: Some users have encountered difficulties when trying to validate DKIM initiation with Proofpoint. They find the configuration consoles and options provided by Proofpoint a bit complicated, leading to confusion. As a result, they express the need for more in-depth rule customization options beyond what is currently offered.

Troubleshooting and Support Issues: Users have expressed dissatisfaction with troubleshooting and support for Proofpoint, stating that it is not straightforward. Some users have experienced unresponsiveness from the support team, encountering long wait times for resolution without receiving acknowledgement when certain components or features do not function as expected. The cluttered support portal filled with outdated information makes it difficult for them to find documentation. To improve support and case resolution, users suggest having a TAM or CSM available. Additionally, some users feel that customer support can be too generic and unhelpful at times, recommending the addition of a chat-bot assistant for better understanding of software features and issue resolution.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-25 of 28)
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Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We were using Microsoft Office 365 ATP for a year before switching to Proofpoint. The product is more expensive but it does a much better job than ATP in filtering the emails. Quarantine digest is fantastic and our users love it. Proofpoint assisted us with the initial setup and administration has been easy since. It is used across our whole organization.
  • Email filtering
  • Quarantine Digest
  • Threat dashboard
  • Nothing in particular. We are happy with the product.
Nicole Dohrman | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use ProofPoint across our entire organization. This prevents a lot of malicious, spam, and junk emails from reaching our business units.
  • Customization of email firewall rules allows for detailed prevention of specific attacks.
  • Email Fraud Defense portal gives very detailed authentication information and errors to our team as we work toward full DMARC compliance.
  • The ability to insert email warning tags at the ProofPoint level prevents additional O365 mail flow rules.
  • The administrative portal is a little complex. Would like to see a more "user friendly" portal to find everything we need.
  • When creating email firewall rules, we have to manually move the rule up using the arrows into the position we want it. Would like to specify the position in the rule stack during creation.
  • When finding emails in smart search, it would be ideal to take action on the emails in the same search area rather than clicking on the email, redirecting to the quarantined folder, then having the option to take action.
ProofPoint Email Protection is very well suited for companies that consider email functionality and communication to be critical business functions. It allows for the prevention of email-based attacks and security forward rule sets that are not available in O365 or Exchange alone.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use Proofpoint for all our inbound and outbound email protection. We have stopped spam from entering our network. Typically users do not receive spam and if they do they sometimes send it to the support desk letting us know one got through. Some users have been here 15 to 20 years so you know their email address has been out in the wild for a while. It is a great product and one I recommend.
  • Rate and stop spam based on the rating
  • Allow us to block email from countries that we do not work in
  • Encrypt our email coming in and out of the domain
  • Proofpoint has many options that you pay for. If you do not need the option then you do not need to pay for it, but it does help to know what is available as an option.
  • Proofpoint has a cloud service and an on-premises one. We currently just use the on-premises service and do not know anything about the cloud offering.
  • Cost is high with some of the options.
Proofpoint Email Protection is a plug-and-go solution. You can also configure Proofpoint if needed. In other words, you can forget about the service or tweak the server to your heart's content. If you are a smaller shop you may want to use something like Office 365's email protection.
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
It is performing email security throughout the entire business. It has numerous operating brands and many different SMTP domains. The customisation available with Proofpoint allows unique branding and policies per operating company which is very valuable.
  • Strong security filtering. We've not had significant threats get past Proofpoint.
  • Customisation is strong. There are lots of options for unique policies.
  • Mail routing has lots of options with powerful rules engine.
  • Directory synchronisation configuration is clunky.
  • General administration, specifically the UI is quite poor. Making changes is not intuitive at all.
  • Terminology used by Proofpoint is not standard with other competing products so things can be confusing.
So far I've found it is suitable for large orgs with complex requirements. For smaller orgs, I find the administrative burden and complexity to be too much.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Proofpoint is being used across our whole organization. All inbound and outbound mail is protected by Proofpoint. We have been using it for about 4 years now and we are very satisfied with the results. It has done a great job of preventing viruses, phishing, impostor emails, etc.
  • Virus protection has been excellent. I cannot remember the last time an email related virus entered our company.
  • The impostor protection within Proofpoint has done a great job of preventing phishing emails.
  • We use Proofpoint for DKIM email signing for outbound mail. Very easy to configure and test.
  • Proofpoint is in the process of refining their admin UX. This will be a big improvement to their current admin UX.
  • They need to work on linking up their various portals so that you do not need to sign into 3 different portals to access your admin consoles.
  • Their working relationship with Microsoft's Office 365 support could be improved. Currently, I have to open tickets with both vendors and play the middle man negotiating fixes.
Proofpoint Email Protection is easily implemented. It does a great job at protecting your email. It has a number of features not found in O365.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Proofpoint Email Protection is being used throughout the organization for email security and spam filtering. We rely on Proofpoint's expertise in email security and threat analysis to stop our users from receiving malicious attachments, excessive spam, and being phished. Proofpoint offers the "right" amount of customization to the platform, but works quite well "out of the box".
  • Recognizing spam and blocking it from coming into end user's email inboxes.
  • Threat analysis on new email threats and how to block it.
  • Customization to continually add/remove rules to strengthen our email security perimeter.
  • I think they could improve their administration GUI.
  • I think that they need/will continue to improve their threat analysis and database upkeep of "bad" IPs.
  • They need to add more functionality and the ability to "tie-in" to Office 365 GCC High.
I think Proofpoint is a great fit for almost any size company. I love the option to have Proofpoint host and manage the cluster for us, and we can just focus on adding/removing security features that we see our company in need of. I don't think Proofpoint is the correct fit for very small companies, but anyone that is looking to expand their email security should look into this product.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Proofpoint Email Protection is a primary security control for my organization. With 80%+ of security breaches involving a phishing vector at some point a strong anti-phishing solution is a must today. While we have myriad secondary and complementary controls used in our defense in depth architecture, Proofpoint is our primary anti-phishing control.
  • Technical Account Manager
  • Training
  • Blocking bad email
  • Support - sometimes too generic
  • Ease of navigating portal
  • Ability to understand scoring mechanisms
Proofpoint Email Protection is well suited for large organizations who are likely targeted for business email compromise or other cyber threats that may originate through phishing. Proofpoint Email Protection may not be well suited for smaller, less mature organizations.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We have implemented it across the organization. It helps secure us from spam, malware, phishing and social engineering.
  • URL Redirection is one of the best feature to stop users from opening any unknown URL and spread a virus.
  • Policies to stop malware and phishing attack.
  • Can do better in stopping spam
Can create a more customized solution based on TAP dashboard reports for your email protection. It can work better on email phishing and malware.
Jorge Golvano | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use it across the whole organization nationwide.
  • Spam detection
  • Phishing prevention
  • Virus detection
  • Management interface
  • False positive reporting
  • System performance
It's a very good filtering solution but not without its problems and issues, especially their so-called cloud implementation which is nothing more than an appliance with storage and performance limitations.

The configuration is very detailed, but at the same time it's not very intuitive and some things are very hard to set up.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Currently, we use Proofpoint to scan emails for our faculty and staff only. It addresses many issues that we have experienced in the past, such as impostor detection and phishing type emails.
  • The product has been stable since we deployed it. It updates regularly with minimal downtime.
  • It provides a easily to navigate interface for for users in regards to viewing/releasing their quarantined items
  • Proofpoint's spam detection is second to none. It is a little aggressive at times, but false positives are often remedied.
  • The support team is great and responds quickly to any issue that arises.
  • I scan the quarantine folders everyday for false positively caught email. I report the FPs that I find to Proofpoint support (everyday), but unfortunately there are always items to release.
  • I wish that there was a method to run a health check on the server without the need for support to login
Proofpoint Email Protection is well suited for a medium on-premises email deployment. I do not have any experience with the cloud-based offering.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our Proofpoint Email gateway is our first and strongest layer of protection against today's advanced world of phishing and malware, helping defend our entire organization from business email compromise threats. Having previously worked with other technologies, there is no question, in my opinion, that Proofpoint is the clear leader in email protection.
  • Defend against impostor email attacks.
  • Defends against zero-day threats.
  • It integrates well with our cloud email platform.
  • There are too many portals to access the various Proofpoint products. I.e. one for email gateway, one for TAP, one for CAD.
  • The support portal is cluttered and full of outdated information.
  • Documentation is hard to find at times when searching via the support portal.
Proofpoint Email Protection is well suited to be the first line of defense in protecting against email threats. The environment is highly customizable, giving you the ability to reach the sweet spot between protecting your organization and providing a great end-user experience.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized

It is being used throughout the organization. We use various features like TAP, TRAP. It is efficient and the global updates help in minimizing threats.

Sometimes it behaves weirdly in reporting FP due to which quarantined legitimate emails. We are planning to use PP to directly connect applications to send emails to clients especially for marketing purposes.

  • TAP
  • TRAP
  • Cloud Updates from various clients of Proofpoint.
  • Policy routes don't work correctly at times.
  • False Positive is a pain at times, essential business emails are quarantined.
  • DNS routing can be an issue at times.

If you want a global threat to be identified before entering your organization, you have this information readily available pre & post-delivery of emails to the vulnerable clients. It also allows you to restrict emails to be delivered to vulnerable users and delete emails from the affected users.

False Positive is good at times as it quarantines affected emails

Transport rule, suspicious sender, etc are some features which help differentiate between legit senders.

Scheduled reports to identify potential issues and analyze the daily/weekly/monthly traffic.

Oliver Strojan | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is the central E-Mail Gateway. It filters out e-mails. It protects user by using url defense for example impostor, dmarc…..
  • It is "easy" to manage, it works stable and they do have a fantastic support.
  • I even worked with a PPS Consultant helping to implement EFD (email fraud defense).
  • He has a very good knowledge in his area and is very helpfull.
  • As all PPS Systems consists as clusters there never was an outage. Even patching the Systems is more or less one click.
  • If I compare this with oter systems it is pretty simple and it always has worked. Not a single issue during patching.
  • Impostor function may be improved so it detects this more reliable. We opened many tickets to report impostor mails. Now it is a little bit better.
  • Message tracking gui (the display of the results) is sometimes broken depending on the results returned. That was working fine in the past and with one patch this issue was introduced and never fixed
Good product, good support.
Keith Krus | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Proofpoint for email protection. We use Office 365 to host email, and ProofPoint alongside with Office 365 across our entire organization and we have been able to reduce virus, spam, and malware emails by over 95%. The biggest security threats we encounter nowadays are sent via email and Proofpoint is able to help protect us.
  • Spam protection. Spam emails as we all know are annoying and can contain phishing material.
  • Virus protection. Protecting our entire network from threats.
  • Malware protection. Prevent spammers/hackers from creating back doors into our network.
  • No changes in my opinion.
Proofpoint not only protects against threats via email but its also a helpful tool for tracking/tracking down emails if a user on our network believes they have not received an email. On multiple occasions, I have used Proofpoint smart searches to assist with tracking emails.
September 11, 2019

Proofpoint Rules!

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are using it to align security practices and provide protection from email threat vectors. Proofpoint is used across most of the organization. There are some outliers that are not protected by Proofpoint. It serves to protect many protected resources from access due to malware and virus outbreaks. It addresses users unknowingly hitting links and or attachments within the email system.
  • Improves security vectors in email.
  • Sandboxing bad URL and detonating malicious email content.
  • Using the product frees up time for other admin tasks.
  • The web interface.
  • Nothing else, the product is great.
Proofpoint is well suited for reporting, TAP and TRAP. The product works well on-premises as well as in the cloud. To not have a product like Proofpoint in your enterprise is a mistake. It is a fantastic product to protect your data and secure the enterprise. Professional services and training are stand-out characteristics for the company and product.
Rich Curtis | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Proofpoint email protection to filter all inbound and outbound email for the corporation worldwide. As opposed to our previous mail filter solution, Proofpoint is able to stop all malware, viruses, and nearly all spam. Additionally, we heavily use the impostor detection feature. Our executives are very commonly impersonated in an attempt to gain gift cards or other goods. Proofpoint has been able to drastically reduce these attacks.
  • Impostor detection
  • Virus detection
  • Malware prevention
  • The cost is significantly higher than other similar products on the market.
  • The administrative interface can be difficult to use. There is no search function and it can be browser-specific.
In our case, the biggest payoff is impersonation and phishing detection. Due to our industry, we are victim to a wide variety of phishing attacks. These include attempts to solicit fraudulent payments, gain customer information, or purchase gift cards to give to the attacker. Proofpoint has been able to drastically reduce these incidents. Some attacks still get through, but they are manageable with end-user training.
August 12, 2019

My Proofpoint Review

Mallinath Doddamani | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It has been used across the whole organization to protect us against spam and unwanted suspicious emails from the internet.
  • It identified the spam or mails which are malware, then classified them as quarantined or discarded.
  • It helps the end-user to allow/block externals users. Users can add a sender to a safe list or block list.
  • It provides the end-user the option to release emails that are blocked.
  • It would be good to have a stand-alone application instead of a web-based portal for the admin console.
  • It should ask for confirmation from admin/user before save or delete operations like Microsoft applications.
  • Admin should be able to open a ticket via the same portal, like the Office 365 portal.
Really, it is a great product.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Proofpoint Email Protection across our whole company to protect our users from getting malware, viruses, spoofed emails, phishing emails, etc. We use Office 365 as our backend email system and it works seemlessly with it. Before getting Proofpoint Email Protection we used to get tons of phishing emails and spoofed emails but 99% of those have stopped since implementing it.
  • Can send daily emails to users showing what emails got caught in their individual spam quarantine
  • Very extensive search engine to search for emails sent/received
  • Easy to block or allow emails in the system
  • It seems there are too many options to let you block or allow emails. It is easy to do still but can be confusing as there are like 5 different places you can do it so maybe simply that somehow.
  • Make an easy way to block email names vs their email address, for example if the email name says Joe Smith but the address says sweet1@hotmail.com when it should be joe.smith@yourcompany.com there should be an easy way to block that kind of email.
  • When doing searches for emails, the from address a lot of times looks weird, different than what you searched for. For example you searched for an email from bobsmith@gmail.com but the from field in the search results may say emailsender101138383093@email.server.number2113.org which is confusing.
I'd say it's well suited for medium to large businesses for sure. For a small office you could definitely get by with just using Office365/Exchange transport rules to block many bad messages. Plus with with a small business you will definitely not be getting the vast amount of message traffic as you would in a large business to justify the cost. However for med/large business it's a no brainer as it's helped a lot.
Andrew Maledy | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 1 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use it to filter spam. We aren’t using it for much more really and aren’t getting much value beyond that.
  • Stop spam
  • That is literally it
  • Our users hate how they can’t see URLs in emails
  • We don’t like that our users can’t release their own emails
Scenarios where Exchange is hosted on-prem or no other options are available.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are utilizing the Proofpoint's hosted appliance as our primary email protection for spam, malware, and other threats. Information Technology deployed this across our entire organization as a reactive step due to issues related to phishing. The Proofpoint engineering team worked with us on a weekend to ensure we were able to implement and remediate the attack that was occurring.
  • Proofpoint allows us granular control in routing email to our end users.
  • The end-user digest feature allows users to get a nice report every morning of all of their bulk junk mail. They get to decide if they want to release and read a message.
  • Proofpoint has a powerful machine learning system that scores attacks in order to stop new and unknown threats.
  • The web portal could definitely be rewritten to make it more user-friendly. It is a bit antiquated and clunky. Needs an HTML 5 overhaul.
  • Work could be put into making it easier to find options. Again, the interface needs overhauled.
  • Initial installation could be streamlined with simpler documentation and assistance in understanding what features should be taken advantage of in Proofpoint vs. Office 365 from a security perspective.
Appropriate: If you are a business that has recently migrated to Office365 and is struggling to gain control over your email security with the built-in tools. Also, if you are a lean IT department and can't manage email security and juggle your other commitments. Less Appropriate: If you are a small shop with a minimal budget, you can fine-tune Office365 security settings instead of deploying Proofpoint. Be aware that it will take much of your time to do it.
July 19, 2019

Great product!

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is used as the frontline in our global email program and provides a base level of management and filtering.
  • Allows for automated enforcement.
  • Allows for easy review and management by the users and administrators.
  • More granular reporting would be a nice to have.
Easy integration into Office 365 and world-class policies.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
We use Proofpoint Email Protection to protect our own Mailtraffic, but as an MSSP (Managed Security Service Provider), our main goal is to resell it to our customers as a managed Service. We run a lot of PPS Gateways in our Datacenters. Proofpoint Email Protection aims to be a carefree solution for every administrator, as far as it's possible. I don't want to sell (you) anything. I am a technician, not a sales guy. Therefore, I'm going to write this review from a technical Point-of-View.
  • Best Spam protection (honestly!).
  • Extremely flexible.
  • Fast support from the vendor.
  • Expensive (but justified).
  • Needs a lot of hardware resources in big environments (RAM hungry).
  • Using old Linux kernel 2.6.32 (CentOS 6.5, still supported though).
Proofpoint is always suited. If you are able to afford it, you should do it. Proofpoint Email Security is extremely flexible, so you can cover almost any scenario and create rules for every need. There are so many criteria/conditions which can be used to build custom rules. In all the years I have used Proofpoint Email Protection Server, I've rarely reached it's limits. And in that case, you can make a Request for Enhancement. Most attacks are done via Email. Everyone should aim to have maximum security. Proofpoint has a lot of techniques to achieve that, even if you don't use SPF/DKIM/DMARC. You can also use PPS to secure your Office 365, by the way.
Score 4 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Proofpoint Email Security for incoming, external e-mail in our organization, as our primary defense against spam and other security threats, and as a way to maintain e-mail continuity if our internal Exchange server is offline or otherwise unreachable. It prevents our users from getting flooded with unsolicited emails and phishing attacks, in most cases, which is extremely important.
  • Spam Filtering: Proofpoint does a very good job of blocking spam natively, and of course users and administrators can set up white lists and blacklists as needed to fine tune everything. There are several configuration options, but we have a quarantine digest sent to end users if it's possible but not confirmed spam. It can also be set to just stamp an email with a "spam" notice in the subject line and send directly, for anything that's suspected as spam.
  • URL Filtering: Proofpoint re-writes URLs in emails so that, if a user clicks one, it takes them to a sort of proxy site that double-checks the URL. This means that even if a malicious email gets through, there's another check before a user could potentially download some harmful file from an attacker's website.
  • E-Mail Continuity: Since email goes through Proofpoint before hitting our internal server, it can hold the e-mail in a queue in case our servers are unreachable. The mail then spools in once the servers are back, or users can log into Proofpoint from outside to check email.
  • URL Filtering: While this is a nice feature, it tends to obfuscate the URL in any readable way. Users are trained to hover over links to make sure they go where they say they're going to go, to check for anything suspicious as a security check. It's almost impossible to decipher the links once they've been rewritten by Proofpoint.
  • User Setup: Although it's fairly simple to add in a user, it takes up to an hour for the email to that user to work, and before that time, they will bounce back as an invalid user. For some reason, Proofpoint only updates its internal lists at the top of the hour.
  • User Spam Management: Since it's a third-party application, it does take a secondary login to manage white- and black-lists for users. This isn't a big deal for administrators on company-wide lists, but it's an extra, cumbersome step beyond just clicking a link for end users, which sometimes means they're not going to bother.
Depending on the circumstances, I think I would recommend a different product. The spam protection works fine, it's not terribly expensive, but there are better products with better usability out there. A very small business with little to no IT staff, perhaps using a managed service provider, might find it works for them just fine, but even then, Office 365 has pretty decent spam filtering already, and a business of that size is probably hosting their email instead of using an on-site solution.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Proofpoint Email Protection is deployed company-wide. It helped address multiple perspectives of secure mail customization, better email protection, and threat blocking/remediation. It also allowed us to bring our archiving into one product. Even though the archiving is a separate piece, it is at least under the same bill and better than what we had prior.
  • Allows for granular customization for the best fit for the company
  • Administration is easy
  • Threat protection is effective
  • Analytics are nice
  • Advanced protection features, such as impostor attacks, work well
  • It does miss some emails that should have been flagged. You look at the body of the email, the headers, etc. and wonder how it could have gotten through, but for the most part, it does a great job
  • The email encryption seems to have some issues. Users will get random errors sometimes - like "Service unavailable" when clicking a link on an encrypted message or "the message has not reached the server or is no longer there", which can be particularly confusing to a recipient because they received an encrypted message and don't understand why this encrypted message that they just received is not in the portal
  • Some of our encryption rules get skipped somehow. It would be nice to be able to determine why
If you want to customize your solution and tailor it to your needs, Proofpoint allows for a LOT of customization, which is really great. We customize the verbiage that goes out in the encrypted emails. It helps to set up a friendlier encrypted message for recipients to trust, which is really important to us.
One of the things that I've found more difficult than say, an on-premise Barracuda Web Filter, is tracking down malicious emails that got through the protection and analyzing how they got through. You can analyze these types of emails in Proofpoint, but it takes some getting used to and takes some deciphering as well.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Proofpoint Email Protection is deployed for the entire email domain. It adds stronger security protection and control for virus/malware, phishing, etc.
  • Ability to set custom policies and rules
  • Ability to re-route or block emails based on policies and rules
  • Proofpoint has a Dynamic Reputation feature which is more comprehensive in blocking IPs sending spam / phishing/ malware.
  • Handles spoofing and impersonator emails
  • For the cloud-hosted product, it is sensitive to disk space and database size for storing messages. If the size is too big, it affects performance of the mail flow.
  • The administration interface can be organized better for navigation
  • The Add Mailing List feature is limited as compared to a Distribution List or Listserv
Proofpoint Email Protection is well suited for granular policies and rules to control and protect organizational emails. One major protection is the Dynamic Reputation - real-time filtering of harmful and malicious emails, including attachments. Without this Proofpoint product, organizational emails - both inbound and outbound - will be harder to deal with spam, phishing, viruses, and malware. It will cost time and resources of IT staff to deal with the issues that come with not being well-protected by Proofpoint.
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