Proofpoint Email Protection Reviews

We use the solution to stop email attacks, such as credential phishing, impersonation, and some forms of spear phishing. It also helps prevent attacks that bypass email authentication protocols like SPF and DMARC.

It's the top choice because no company can operate without security. Ensuring email protection is a major priority for any organization when building its infrastructure. It effectively stops sophisticated attacks launched by advanced threat actors. It can identify attacks related to impersonation, deception, identity theft, business email compromise, and more.

One major threat is QR code phishing, along with TOAD (Telephone-Oriented Attack Delivery). TOAD attacks don't include links, URLs, or attachments in emails. Instead, attackers try to trick you into calling them, often by offering something enticing like a 50% discount on football matches. Once you call, they may try to get your two-factor authentication code or send malicious links to your personal email, bypassing security controls. Proofpoint has consistently detected and prevented these kinds of deceptive attacks.

I have been using Proofpoint Email Protection for five years.

The product is stable. 

It's top-rated for scalability because of its architecture. It uses a central management solution called Master and supports adding up to 25 or 30 agents. Each agent can handle a significant number of users, so with 2 agents, you can cover 5,000 to 10,000 users. Given this setup, 25 to 50 agents can manage even larger user bases. These agents are servers, not software installed on individual machines, which allows for excellent scalability.

The initial setup is straightforward and user-friendly, but it does require experts to implement. It's not something that regular users can handle. You need skilled professionals who have a good understanding of email systems, Office 365, Exchange, email flow, and SMTP protection. While the process is simple, having knowledgeable people is essential for a successful implementation.

It starts with an offline configuration in the first phase, keeping everything inactive and not migrating traffic right away. This allows you to validate policies, mail traffic, and mail flow without affecting live operations. Once everything is validated, the cutover happens in phase two. After ensuring the cutover is successful, you can then move on to the tuning phase.

I’ve done this many times. The initial setup duration depends on the company size, the complexity of the policies, the rules in place, and whether the setup is complex or straightforward.

They have their own dedicated Protection Services team and rely on certified professional service engineers on the ground.

To protect email effectively, you need to secure it across multiple channels—external, internal, and even after delivery. Proofpoint is the top choice for comprehensive email protection because it covers all these aspects. Gartner has stated that to fully protect email, you need coverage across all channels, and Proofpoint is the only vendor with a platform capable of doing that.

It operates using the MLX engine along with AI to protect against business email compromise. Some of the engines within the solution rely purely on AI. The system can be left to learn normal behavior over two to three weeks. Once it understands this behavior, it provides protection based on what it has learned. We also acquired a vendor called TCL, which excels in detecting attacks through advanced analysis and AI.

Tuning requires time; it's not difficult to maintain but needs careful adjustment. It may take about a week to ensure everything is optimized according to best practices, focusing on tuning rather than just configuration.

I am an administrator. I manage it as an admin for each and every inbound and outbound email.

The phishing and spam filters are the most effective features. There is also a trap feature that is most effective.

Sometimes it doesn't detect actual spam emails, and sometimes it catches normal emails, which is not spam. So I think the filtering should be improved in the future. I believe Proofpoint is already working on that.

The pricing is also something that could be improved. It's literally high.

AI is not yet fully enabled in this tool. Hopefully, in the future, it will work.

I have been using it for 3+ years.

I would rate the stability 8/10.

I would rate the scalability a seven out of ten. There are around 70,000 end users. It is used daily. As a admin, I have to use it daily for various use cases.

The customer service and support are good.

Positive

I believe Proofpoint is more effective in blocking spam and malicious emails than Exchange Online Protection because I've worked with both.

It has a better spam filter than Exchange Online Protection.

I don't have much experience with any other tool, but I know the basics of Exchange Online Protection (EOP). Mostly, I use Proofpoint.

EOP is included with Microsoft and is free. But even though Proofpoint is paid, it gives a lot of features. Its filters are better than EOP.

The initial setup has average complexity. It is on the cloud. 

It takes days, not hours. For the organization I work in, most of the data is on-premises. So, syncing takes time.

The deployment was done in-house.

It's time-saving because it catches a lot of spam and phishing emails. Users are fine with it, even though it's a little costly. It does its work.

It is expensive.

I would recommend Proofpoint Email Protection to other people. 

It's easy to use, even for those new to IT. The UI is simple and easy to learn. Many courses and articles are available if you want to learn more. It's easy and efficient.

Overall, I would rate it 9/10.

I use the product for email protection and staff awareness training. 

Proofpoint Email Protection offers an additional layer of protection compared to other brands like Microsoft, Mimecast, and Barracuda. While these major companies excel at detecting malicious attachments, the solution goes further by analyzing the context of emails, allowing for more nuanced decision-making.

The solution doesn't slow down things. It's very effective at blocking spam and phishing emails. 

The product's deployment is complex and requires technical knowledge.

I have been using the product for six months. 

The solution is mature and stable. The tool's strength lies in its extensive industry knowledge and access to up-to-date information on the latest cyber threats. This allows their products to stay current and adapt to the evolving market in real-time. 

I rate the tool's scalability an eight out of ten. My company has 100 users. 

I haven't contacted the tool's technical support. 

The solution's deployment is complex if you use Google instead of Microsoft. You need to know the settings to make the most out of it. The process took two hours to complete. However, the customer needs to cooperate.  

The product's effectiveness in blocking phishing attacks is significant, especially considering that approximately 93 percent of breaches occur through phishing. It outperforms many other leading brands in terms of blocking such attacks. 

The tool's pricing depends on the customer's preference, offering options for an annual license or a monthly subscription. The cost varies based on factors such as the number of users and specific requirements. Overall, the pricing is competitive.

The product prevents phishing attacks, but its Data Loss Prevention (DLP) capabilities might be limited compared to other specialized products. While it offers some protection against business email compromise, it may not cover all aspects. Supplementing Proofpoint with additional layers of security, such as Amazon Redshift, is recommended to cover all security aspects. You need a little bit of technical knowledge to set it up. I rate the overall solution a nine out of ten. I haven't got any false positives while using it. 

We use it for user queries. For example, if a user flags that they're not receiving emails from a particular sender, we investigate where it got blocked in Proofpoint, if it was delivered successfully, or if it was quarantined. 

We also onboard new domains, adding SPF and DKIM records to the DNS records so that all incoming mail is processed by Proofpoint before reaching the internal network.

The Tap and Trap features. They are the best features, in my opinion. I've worked with other tools which didn't have these features.

The support team was a bit slow. It takes months to implement the next feature.

So I'd like to see faster support.

The company has been using it for two or three years, but I recently joined. In my previous organization, we also used a Proofpoint tool. So I've used Proofpoint products for about six to eight months now.

Once there was a breakdown. Proofpoint was shut down for four hours due to a server issue. But other than that, there have been no other issues. It is stable.

We are a very big company with around 25 to 30 business units. We are slowly onboarding those units to Proofpoint. 

Every email to those units will go through Proofpoint. As of now, we have onboarded 15 or 16. We are in the process of fully onboarding all domains.

I didn't work on the installation and deployment, but I know the procedure. It's easy, not complicated. We just need to have servers and storage capacity. 

In our organization, it was an on-premises Proofpoint Protection, so we had a server, capacity storage, and all. We also need to connect that server with our internal environment and Active Directory. It's all easy. 

There's documentation from Proofpoint on how to do it. And we also have support from their team to guide us.

It's a bit expensive compared to other tools.

The decision also depends on the budget. But going with Proofpoint is the best option because it has so many advanced features that other tools don't have. It will be good for company security.

It is easy for a beginner to learn to use Proofpoint Email Protection. Proofpoint provides free courses to its customers. They can take those courses and learn how to use it. It will take them one or two months to get to know all the features, and then they're good to go.

Overall, I would rate it an eight out of ten. 

Our main use case for the solution is email protection. It filters incoming emails, particularly those from spammy origins. While it's not perfect, it effectively filters out about 99.5% of all spam, making it a great product for us.

The tool has improved our workflow by ensuring people receive only the emails they need for work rather than being inundated with hundreds or thousands of unnecessary emails daily.

The most valuable feature of Proofpoint Email Protection is the ability to review and access quarantined emails. Sometimes, the tool may classify valid emails as spam, so being able to review and retrieve them is crucial.

The solution has all the plugins needed to integrate with Office 365.

I have been using the product for ten years. 

I rate the tool's stability a ten out of ten. 

I rate the solution's scalability a ten out of ten. 

I am not allowed to contact security product vendors directly. However, I haven't had any issues with the solution. 

Our security team worked directly with Proofpoint Email Protection for the deployment; no consultants were involved. Its technical support team assisted us in setting up the solution. 

Proofpoint Email Protection is a standard email protection product and is gaining recognition as a leader in the field. It safeguards email systems. I rate the overall solution a ten out of ten. 

We use most of Proofpoint Email Protection's features including email phishing protection, TAP (Targeted Attack Protection), TRAP (Threat Response Auto-Pull), URL rewrites, and sandboxing. It is currently used in a hybrid environment and we have just deployed a patch for the latest version.

Proofpoint Email Protection's advantage is that, when it's working properly, it tends to catch more threats as compared to other products.

Unfortunately, the whole product is going downhill right now, ever since they were sold to Thoma Bravo. We're constantly having problems with stability and the product in general.

Even their sales and support is deteriorating as well. I can't even get them to quote me for the next year, possibly because they are still in disarray from their sale.

Because of these issues, we are likely going to move away from it soon. I would prefer not to change, but I might not have a choice, especially if they can't even send me the proper quotes for everything.

I have been using Proofpoint Email Protection for about five years now.

The stability of Proofpoint Email Protection is a problem right now, and I assume it has to do with their sale to Thoma Bravo.

These days, I would rate the stability a four of ten.

We have somewhere between 4,000-6,000 users who are benefiting from the solution. However, when it comes to extending our usage, I'm not sure if we will go ahead with them because they're completely dropping the bomb on everything; they won't even respond to give me quotes to renew this year.

Licensing issues aside, I would rate the product an eight out of ten in terms of scalability.

The initial setup was good, at least until the last 12 months after their sale. I would rate the setup process an eight out of ten.

Our in-house team worked with Proofpoint's engineers for the deployment. It was a pretty quick process of setting up the email gateways and starting up the VMs in our hybrid environment. Overall, we only needed one person for the VMs and server setup, and one other person to take care of the security configuration and all the rest.

In terms of ROI as compared to their competitors, Proofpoint still has a very good phishing signature file, so they're probably catching 5-10% more threats than what the other products are catching. If you can keep it running, that is.

They are competitively priced, but I have been forced to get quotes for other solutions now because they haven't been responding to requests to do the work that we would like them to do.

My advice to others is to be cautious because they seem to be going through some changes (likely to do with corporate structuring issues) that are negatively affecting customer service and stability.

I would rate Proofpoint Email Protection a six out of ten.

The primary use case of Proofpoint Email Protection is to ensure email security for both incoming and outgoing emails.

The most valuable feature is the option to edit the inbound security. 

In terms of improvement, I have some concerns regarding the effectiveness of Proofpoint's phishing protection. There is room for improvement in detecting and preventing phishing attacks. While the solution performs well in some aspects, it struggles with phishing threats. There are other solutions on the market that do a good job with that.

I have been using the solution for three years.

In terms of stability, the solution performs well. We have not experienced any issues or downtime.

The solution is scalable enough for our organization. Approximately 2,000 people use it at our company daily.

We are currently working with both Proofpoint and Abnormal Security, but we plan on completely switching to Abnormal Security soon. Proofpoint needs to work on its performance in handling spam and phishing and to improve its services when it comes to AI or ML-based solutions. Even if Proofpoint decides to roll out such features, it will take some time. There are competitors on the market who already offer those features, and that is why we opted for Abnormal Security.

The initial setup is quite easy. It took one day to deploy the solution because our team needed to edit SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records, which took some time as well.

My advice to people who are considering using Proofpoint would be to properly evaluate the services it offers. During the POC phase, you should assess all features offered, including phishing protection, and ensure they are up to date. You should compare Proofpoint with other vendors in the market before making a decision. Overall, I would rate the solution a six out of ten.

I use Proofpoint Email Protection as an email protection system.

The most valuable feature of the solution is the protection it offers to emails, along with the spam filters.

The stability and UI are the two areas of the solution with certain shortcomings that need improvement.

I have been using Proofpoint Email Protection for four or five years. My company is a customer of the solution.

Stability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

I wouldn't say that the solution's stability is imperfect since it has been a stable tool. In our company, we see some notifications in the tool stating that certain login attempts are not happening successfully, but it is important to note that these issues happen rarely. The issue in the solution may be because of our lack of experience with the solution in our company.

A lot of people rely on the solution's UI. I often see the solution's UI go down, like once a month, which doesn't happen very often, in my opinion.

It is a scalable solution. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

The solution's technical support is good. I rate the technical support a ten out of ten.

Positive

I had previously worked with an email protection system from Symantec.

The initial setup of Proofpoint Email Protection is easy.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model, along with a SaaS version. A PnP deployment is enough with the on-premises version, which is an appliance.

The solution's deployment process took around a week.

I was a part of the solution's deployment process, which was pretty much engaging professional services, putting requirements and other stuff in place before going for the validation part, making it a simple process.

Proofpoint Email Protection is a reasonably priced product, which means that it is neither too low nor too high in terms of price.

I rate the price of Proofpoint Email Protection a seven on a scale of one to ten, where one is low, and ten is high.

Proofpoint has many modules, allowing one to opt for the right module that fits into their business. Oversubscribing to modules in Proofpoint may not help, and it can get expensive after a certain point. I work for a financial organization, so I know emails and stuff coming over emails are considered critical in our company, and because of this, we are pretty much subscribed to most of Proofpoint's modules. I see a benefit from the product. The solution may not fit into some other organizations.

Though Proofpoint Email Protection has been a strong and stable product, I feel that Proofpoint can still do better. The support for the product has been great since the solution's support team has been very responsive and accommodating to our requests, especially regarding the enhancements we have put in the solution.

Proofpoint Email Protection has been a very good tool that has been very accommodating to our company's needs. The tool helps my company since it has a lot of capabilities, especially the feature to provide protection to emails. I don't have anything that I could complain about. My experience with the solution has been good, as it works the way I expected it to function.

The stability can get redundant because of ensuring the email system in an organization where every minute counts, and since it is deployed on a SaaS model, it becomes a critical infrastructure where an organization doesn't have much visibility. Organizations rely on vendor infrastructure, so I hope that Proofpoint does a better job there and ensures that the solution functions with the least downtime or on a no-downtime kind of model.

I rate the overall solution a nine out of ten.