PULLMAN –
Now in place for about six months, WSU has completed the testing and implementation of e-mail security systems developed by Proofpoint Inc. to protect more than 20 e-mail domains, serving approximately 30,000 university e-mail users from spam and viruses and improving the overall performance of its e-mail infrastructure.
Now in place for about six months, WSU has completed the testing and implementation of e-mail security systems developed by Proofpoint Inc. to protect more than 20 e-mail domains, serving approximately 30,000 university e-mail users from spam and viruses and improving the overall performance of its e-mail infrastructure.
In recent years, as the university’s student population has increased and as the volume of inbound spam has picked up significantly, WSU has experienced a tenfold increase in e-mail traffic to students, faculty and staff. As the complexity of spam and virus threats continued to increase, the university’s previous e-mail security system began to prove ineffective in accurately detecting and blocking spam, requiring increasingly frequent intervention by WSU staff.
“We required a bulletproof solution that could scale easily to handle our increasing e-mail volume and that automatically adapts to constantly changing e-mail threats,” said Tom Ambrosi, senior director of networks and chief information security officer for WSU. “We originally evaluated Proofpoint’s appliance-based solution, which was up and running quickly and delivered outstanding results.”
During a 30-day test of the Proofpoint appliance, the university found that the system was highly effective in filtering the increased volume of spam and offered all of the administration and end-user features required. Following that evaluation phase, WSU chose to protect the university’s entire e-mail infrastructure by deploying Proofpoint’s SaaS solution, Proofpoint on Demand.
“Proofpoint was the right technology choice and, as we moved into production, we realized that there would be significant advantages to using a hosted service,” said Viji Murali, vice president of information services and chief information officer at WSU. “We needed a solution that could easily scale with our continued growth, without having to invest in new hardware or worry about capacity planning issues.
“Proofpoint on Demand is really the best of both worlds. It gives us all of the control and customizability of an on-premises solution, with the convenience, scalability and cost-effectiveness of a hosted service.”
Both WSU’s Information Technology Services Department and a number of the e-mail users they serve have been impressed with the performance of the new security system.
“As a testament to how well Proofpoint works, when we first started using the system, we actually received an increase in the number of calls to the IT department from users who believed the e-mail server was down because they weren’t receiving any spam,” said Ambrosi.
The Proofpoint on Demand solution continues to catch over half a million spam messages per day, blocking them before the reaching WSU’s various downstream mail servers, he said.
