Kent State University Deploys Proofpoint SaaS and Appliance Solutions for Comprehensive Email Security

Market Wire, October, 2008

Proofpoint, Inc., the leading provider of unified email security, archiving and data loss prevention solutions, announced today that Kent State University has deployed Proofpoint's email security solutions in a "hybrid" configuration -- combining Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) anti-spam and anti-virus features with on-premise appliances for email routing and policy enforcement.

Kent State University has deployed both Proofpoint on Demand(TM) (Proofpoint's SaaS offering) and the Proofpoint Messaging Security Gateway(TM) appliance to protect more than 80,000 mailboxes from spam and email-borne viruses while also solving email routing and management challenges. Following a rapid implementation process, Kent State is using Proofpoint on Demand for all inbound threats and Messaging Security Gateway on premises for internal routing to various campus locations.

Kent State currently receives six million emails per day, 95 percent of which is spam. Given the large volume, the university believed the optimal approach to defend against inbound messaging threats such as spam, viruses and denial-of-service attacks was "in the cloud," prior to entering the network. With Proofpoint on Demand, Kent State email users now receive only legitimate messages, improving network performance, reducing the load on downstream mail servers and easing IT management burdens in the process.

"Over the past two years, Kent State has experienced an exponential increase in the volume and complexity of spam which could create significant harm to our email infrastructure," said Todd Ryan, manager of systems administration for Kent State University. "Our previous email security tool was failing and unable to effectively scale to our ever-changing needs. However, Proofpoint's hybrid deployment model, product and implementation support, cost effectiveness and flexibility worked perfectly for us."

Proofpoint on Demand provides superior protection against all types of inbound spam, even as spammers experiment with new, sophisticated distribution tactics and rapidly evolve their techniques. Powered by Proofpoint MLX(TM) machine learning technology, Proofpoint on Demand's anti-spam engine inspects hundreds of thousands of attributes in incoming email messages, eliminating all types of spam with higher than 99.8% percent effectiveness on an ongoing basis.

Proofpoint on Demand is also designed to protect end users from viruses, worms and other malicious code. With Proofpoint on Demand, organizations like Kent State University can manage anti-virus, anti-spam and even data loss prevention policies from the same convenient, Web-based administrative interface, making it easy to monitor, control and define messaging policies for all Proofpoint features.

Ryan continued, "Our chief information officer believes that email is one of the most mission critical applications within the university, which absolutely can not go offline. Because of this mindset, strong technical support from our vendor was a key selection criterion. We're happy to report that Proofpoint has met and exceeded the IT team's support requirements."

Kent State's IT team manages a complex email environment with 80,000 end-user mailboxes and -- in addition to needing highly-effective protection from inbound spam and viruses -- the university was looking for a solution to help manage sophisticated internal email routing requirements and reliably handle outbound email. Deploying Proofpoint Messaging Security Gateway appliances on premises gave the university the advanced routing, reporting and LDAP-based management features they required.

"In general, there is no 'one-size-fits-all' solution for information security. However, this is where hybrid solutions can play a role in providing different organizations with a choice of deployment platforms or, more recently, a mix of deployment platforms that leverage the strengths of each platform," said Brian Burke, program director, security products and services for IDC. "In fact, a recent IDC study on messaging security found that 25% of North American organizations have already adopted a hybrid mix of on-premises and hosted messaging security services."

"Kent State is illustrative of the direction the messaging security industry is taking. As spam and malware volumes spike, organizations will look to defend against these threats 'in the cloud' while ensuring policy enforcement and providing additional security and email management services on premises," said Sandra Vaughan, senior vice president of products and marketing for Proofpoint. "By embracing a hybrid approach, Kent State is ultimately getting a higher degree of security with a lower total cost of ownership."

Learn More About the Trend Toward Hybrid Email Security Deployments

Hybrid email security solutions combine the email hygiene benefits of an "in the cloud" hosted service with the granular policy enforcement, encryption and data loss prevention capability of an on-premises appliance-based solution. Learn more by downloading an exclusive IDC analyst report, "The Latest in Hybrids: Deployment Models for Email Security," by visiting: