Item: Proofpoint Email Protection
Rating: 10
Author: Fraser Clark

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Proofpoint is being used across our sister companies and we have an admin in each of the countries.
It is our main email security tool and is used by all of our users.

We were in need of a product that could handle higher volumes of email traffic and Proofpoint regularly features as one of the top email security products. It addresses many of the issues we were having with email security, some we didn't even realize we had. It has helped us get a very detailed overview of our email. We have extremely granular control of our inbound and outbound email.

Pros and Cons

Granular control of inbound and outbound email.
The rules that can be configured for mail are extremely impressive. An example is that you could configure rules so that if your CEO sends an email that cannot create a TLS link with the receiving MTA, then it will reinject the mail into the queue and send it again with encryption configured.
To ensure emails are never sent over plain text. This is but one of the examples.
Spam detection is amazing. Proofpoint can detect and stop around 99% of spam and this is shown in the reporting available.
End-user services are fantastic and cut down on admin work greatly.
End-users can create their own filters, release their own mail and also get end-user digests so they can see all mail that has been delivered to them.

The pricing is high and there are many licenses for things I feel should be part of other products.
The UI is slightly dated and has a lot of room for improvement.
The separate products should have one pane of glass for administration. Currently, if you own several of the products it feels quite disjointed when using them.

Return on Investment

Our internal pen-test has been thwarted completely thanks to proofpoint, all email attack vectors were unsuccessful.
We now have a better overview of our email and have successfully implemented DMARC. This is largely due to proofpoint.
We are able to see a vast amount of reporting & logging which was previously not available.

Alternatives Considered

We previously used halon anti-spam, which lasted us well until our organization really started to grow and it was not able to keep up with the amount of mail we were receiving. The support is also nothing compared to Proofpoint's professional services offering.
Halon was also not able to have the complex rules that Proofpoint can offer.

Other Software Used

Cisco ASA, Splunk Cloud, Proofpoint Advanced Threat Protection

Likelihood to Recommend

In mid-large companies, this is an excellent solution, especially if you require complex filtering. Perhaps due to regulatory reasons or maybe different departments require different rulesets. This is where Proofpoint excels in my opinion, the granularity is mind-blowing.
Companies with very large inbound & outbound mail flow are also where Proofpoint will excel.

In smaller companies that don't require the complex options that Proofpoint offers is where I would recommend a different product. Especially if they do not get large amounts of mail or aren't doing bulk sends.

Proofpoint email security, everything you need and more!

Overall Satisfaction with Proofpoint Email Protection