Proofpoint Email Protection Reviews

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. 

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. 

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.

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.

Our organization is large and has multiple entities that use the solution. 

Our department includes two senior information security analysts and two network analysts. We use the solution and as our main security filter for 90% of emails. Emails come into the domain, hit the gateway firsthand, and the solution filters for spam, phishing, malware, and virus attachments. 

The TAP service integrates with the PPS API connection and analyzes every bit of email that goes through the system. Troublesome domains are blocked automatically without needing to be analyzed. If a specific email address is not blocked, the email gets released. TAP still analyzes the email, identifies whether it is a threat, and details its attributes such as the IP address, subject and content, and URL name. 

All metadata for a threat email is sent from TAP to TRAP which goes back to the user's mailbox and automatically pulls the email so that it disappears. TRAP also identifies if the email has been distributed, even to 10,000 users, and attempts to pull back all instances. TRAP can pull internal emails but not external emails because it does not have access to external systems. 

Our company uses the solution to its fullest potential. 

A organization's security culture and investment defines how extensively they will use the solution. For example, Bank of America is a big company where security is important so they will spend millions of dollars improving their product. A smaller company with just 10,000 users might only do a certain level to improve.  

Spam scoring is a feature for which usage varies. The solution scores emails from zero to 100 and companies can decide the level of acceptance. A level of 70 might block too many emails so users will complain. If you have 2,000 users, the complaints might cause you to loosen the rating constraints to 85 or so. 

The solution's whole server is valuable because has robust algorithms, AI that learns what goes through a company's email server, and strong rules for analyzing data. Competitor's products are just standard email filters that block or pass with no ongoing AI for learning. 

The security is very strong and comparatively better than Cisco CES. For example, in the last six months there has been an uptick in phishing campaigns or malicious email attachments purporting to come from Geek Squad. I see a substantial number of these troublesome emails pass through CES, Barracuda, and Mimecast but I have not seen a single email pass through the solution. 

The Phish Alarm button allows users to submit questionable emails for review and complete analysis. A submitted email is analyzed in the cloud sandbox and the results are provided along with the actual email. Substantial information is included in this dynamic analysis such as email details, URLs, links, domains, ages of accounts, and what the email is intending to do. No other product offers this type of built-in email analysis. I have reviewed three different products including Cofense and they all send the email with its metadata to the user's security response team for manual review.  

The solution's server console and cluster dashboard have been the same for four years so need to be upgraded. There is no feature-rich dashboard so searching emails is cumbersome and slow. The way Facebook, Gmail, and LinkedIn looked five years ago is not the same as today. Everything today is feature-rich and user-friendly.

I have been using the solution for four years. 

The solution is very stable with no issues in six years. I never have situations with the cloud going down or email going haywire. However, I have seen other products have these issues. 

The solution is scalable depending on your licenses. 

Technical support is excellent, very easy to access, and fast. It is easy to chat with support via the online community portal. They will point you in the right direction during chat sessions or set up a call with a support agent. 

This is the first solution our company has used. 

The deployment process is pretty easy. 

The solution builds your cluster in the cloud and gives you a gateway, URL, MX records, and IP addresses. You then set up your DMS and MX records for your cluster and tie it to your email gateway. The process is pretty simple and can be done within a week. 

Suppose all your emails and servers are from Microsoft 365 with mailboxes in the cloud. Once your domain is on the solution's cluster, it needs to be connected with the Microsoft email gateway. Think of a pipe where water goes from one end to the other. The solution sits at the entrance of the pipe to filter out bad particles. Filtered items go into the pipe or Microsoft's email gateway. Down the pipe there is an open tap which pours right into the user's glasses. 

We implement the solution for customers. Implementation takes one to three people depending on the size of the organization. 

Our team handles any ongoing maintenance which is minimal. 

The solution uses a licensing model that is reasonable compared to other products. I rate pricing a nine out of ten. 

I appreciate the solution because it is purely for email security. 

The solution is a great product and the best existing option in 2022. You will be very happy with the solution's security features. 

I rate the solution a nine out of ten. 

It serves as an added layer above your email gateway.

Its main defense is to stop malicious emails from coming through. There is a sandbox environment where you can open malicious or suspicious emails to make sure that they're not malicious, instead of taking the risk of having your employees do it. This is definitely something that everybody needs nowadays, especially with the rise in cyber attacks.

It can be improved pricing-wise. One downfall of the product from the SMB side is the pricing. Currently, everybody can't afford it. Everybody wants a Mercedes, but not everyone has the budget for it.

I want Security Awareness Training in there as a package deal. A lot of companies are starting to value email security a little bit more and take it a little bit more seriously, and the great product that we link together with a lot of these sales is a training product called Security Awareness Training. It is an upsell that we do with Proofpoint, and it is definitely something that I recommend everybody with email security to look into. It would be great if Security Awareness Training is included with the email security.

Its stability is great. There are no outages.

Its scalability is very good. It is a SaaS solution. So, it is very adaptable. Out of my about 50 clients, more than half are using it. It is always going to be used well by customers, but we need to emphasize a little bit more on email security.

They are good. I would rate them a 10 out of 10. They are responsive and very intuitive.

Positive

Most customers switched from Microsoft. The reason why they switched over was the results. There were more and more people who were coming to them asking why something or a breach happened. We actually caught a live breach during a PoC, and it was getting through their Microsoft, but Proofpoint was picking it up.

It is pretty straightforward. Its deployment is done by Proofpoint. It takes less than a day.

Its implementation is done through Proofpoint.

Our clients have definitely seen an ROI. Their level of breach and reporting of malicious emails from their user base actually went down by over 50% by using this product. That's over a two-year span for emails.

It is on a yearly basis. Their floor for SMB doesn't matter. The user count is 100 users and below at $2,500 a year.

Its cost is higher than other solutions. It is probably about 20% to 30% higher than what you would get with Microsoft. There are no additional costs. All costs are factored in.

It can be improved pricing-wise so that it is affordable for the SMB market.

They didn't evaluate any other solution.

We get no complaints, and that's why we sell it. It has been very good. I would recommend this product to everybody. It doesn't matter whether you are a large business or a small business. You need it no matter what. Going forward, it is going to be the norm to have something more than just your basic email protection because the SEC is actually catching onto a lot of these bad actors. As per the survey, the number one risk for companies was their own employees clicking something. It is a good story I tell my customers, and just like that, they're purchasing from us. It is an easier sell. It isn't hard to sell. Your average sales cycle, from PoC to close, on this one is most likely going to be within the 90-day period.

It is overall good. I would rate it an 8 out of 10.

The product looks at the emails that we receive. If there are any suspicious emails with attachments or strange content, it will detect that and give us an alert on a dashboard. From there, we can pick up the alert, and then we can review and take action to mitigate any risk.

Overall, it is a good product.

We like that it provides everything in a single dashboard. On that, we can find all the information related to the risks involved within a suspicious email.

The initial setup is very, very easy.

It's a stable, reliable product.

As a cloud-based product, it can scale well. 

Customer support is very helpful and responsive. They are great at answering questions. 

We'd like to have the ability to create more customized reports.

It would be ideal if we could customize exceptions more effectively and have more control over blacklisting and whitelisting. 

The solution can be expensive. 

I've been using the solution for the past three or four years. 

The solution is stable and reliable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

We find it scales well. It is cloud-based, which makes the process very easy.

We have about 5,000 people using the solution right now.

We do contact support regularly. We do get in touch to understand certain features or if we want to know more about how to use something. We frequently get in touch with support. They offer excellent assistance.

Positive

This is an easy product to set up. It's not complex at all in terms of implementation.

How long it takes to deploy depends on the business. If they approve and agree to everything readily, it should only take a couple of weeks. 

I'm not sure of the exact cost. My understanding is it is expensive.

I have been recently attempting to compare Microsoft 365 and Proofpoint. 

We are a customer. We are not a partner.

I'm not sure which version number we're using.

It is one of the leading email security providers and has gone through reviews by our application security team. They evaluated all of the features to make sure they aligned with our needs, and so far, it has not disappointed me. 

I would recommend the product as it provides everything users need right in one place, especially security controls. 

It may be a good idea, however, to have a separate product for security control and a separate product for email business flows to give a separation of duties. Instead of having everything in one place, it is sometimes best to manage business and security policies separately. Companies should have dedicated security and an effective email security gateway where they can control the security of an entire organization.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. It's very useful to be able to see everything in one central place. 

The stability is good.

The spam filter for email is good.

The solution can scale. 

We have found the initial setup to be straightforward. 

I have some concerns about Proofpoint mail flow rules. It's not smart.

Proofpoint has a lot of false alarms. Even their mail flow rules are not the best thing. Mimecast and Microsoft Office 365 are better than them. Many emails are marked as spam unnecessarily. I've had issues and have had to open many tickets. 

I've used the solution for five years. 

The stability is good. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable. 

While most of my clients have under 100 users, my understanding is if it works for 100, it can work for 1,000 or 10,000 users. Scaling shouldn't be an issue. 

I've talked to support about creating rules and the issues we've had. I've had to open many tickets with them. 

For example, last month our web application sent an invoice for one of the customers, and it relayed the email on behalf of the customer domain. This email was marked as phishing. Even when the SBS was correct and the DCOM was correct. I opened a ticket. The rule didn't work. They responded fast. Even though I have problems, I find them to be responsive. 

I have used Defender, Proofpoint, and Mimecast. I use them daily for different companies and have subscriptions for all three. In my company, we use Defender.

Mimecast and Microsoft are better than Proofpoint when it comes to mail rules. On Proofpoint, the rules don't work as expected. 

The solution is straightforward and simple to set up. It's not overly complex. 

I'm a freelancer working to support some companies that are using Proofpoint. 

Sometimes I create a subscription for them and configure everything from scratch; sometimes, I take it already configured and just maintain it.

Anyone with basic knowledge of the solution and how to configure items will not have an issue with this product.

I'd rate it seven out of ten based on the mail flow issues I have witnessed.