Proofpoint: Cybersecurity Portfolio Review

Proofpoint promises to protect your people, data, and brand against security threats and compliance risks using a proven suite of people-centric solutions. By considering the human element responsible for security threats and vulnerabilities, users can be protected, and their behavior changed, so they in turn protect your organization.

Since being founded in 2002 with headquarters in Sunnyvale, California, Proofpoint has demonstrated unprecedented growth and success. The company went public in 2012, and by 2020 had generated over $1 billion in revenue with offices all over the world. In 2021, the private equity software investment firm, Thoma Bravo, acquired Proofpoint with a go-private software deal valued at $12.3 billion.

Proofpoint Portfolio

Email Security and Protection

According to the 2021 Cost of Phishing Study conducted by the Ponemon Institute, the average annual cost of phishing attacks in the United States has increased from $3.8 million in 2015 to $14.8 million in 2021. To improve email and security protection, Proofpoint offers features that

• Accurately classify malware, impostor and phishing emails, and spam using NexusAI.
• Detect reply-to pivots, malicious IPs, and the use of impersonated domains by analyzing message attributes such as header data, the sender’s IP address, and the message body.
• Automatically remove malicious emails post-delivery that were forwarded to or received by additional users.

Security Awareness Training

By delivering the right education to the right people, so they can deliver the right response at the right time, Proofpoint turns your users into a strong line of defense capable of helping to protect your organization. With Proofpoint, you will be able to

• Learn to identify the Very Attacked People (VAPs) and Top Clickers within your organization.
• Engage users in phishing simulations to determine risk and drive changes in behavior.
• Encourage and celebrate users that report potential threats.

Compliance and Archiving

Manage and archive your data while meeting regulatory, legal, and corporate requirements. Proofpoint allows you to

• Capture, manage, and retain content from social media, collaboration apps, instant messenger chats, and text messaging.
• Streamline SEC, FINRA, and IIROC compliance.

Security Service Edge

Use cloud apps with confidence by securing applications such as Microsoft Office 365 and Google Workspace. With Proofpoint, you can

• Grant users the appropriate level of access.
• Control how your data is shared and downloaded.
• Manage web browsing by denying access to potentially malicious URL links, prevent the execution of JavaScript or Active content, and destroy user browsing sessions when they are done.

Information Protection

Protect against data loss by addressing data risk due to negligence, compromise, or malicious users. Proofpoint improves information protection by enabling you to

• Identify and classify sensitive data.
• Detect, manage, and protect sensitive data found in email.
• Apply policy-based email and attachment encryption.

Threat Protection

With a rich threat intelligence and context portal, Proofpoint provides answers to valuable questions that will help prevent attacks and reduce risk.

• Who is behind the threat?
• What method did they use to attack?
• What were they after?
• When did they attack?
• Why your organization?
• Why now?

Digital Risk Protection

Secure your brand and maintain the integrity and reputation of your organization.

• Identify unauthorized use of your logos and proprietary images.
• Create a comprehensive list of legitimate brand-owned domains and social media accounts.
• Monitor threats made against your physical locations, including gun threat reports, protest language, public safety reports, and other general hazards.

Proofpoint Partners

Technology partners bring the industry’s best security firms together with Proofpoint to deliver integrated solutions.

Global System Integrator (GSI) and Global Managed Service Provider (MSP) Partners are trusted and strategic partners with the proven ability to deliver consulting, outsourcing, and managed services together with Proofpoint. 

Social Media Protection Partners are committed to leveraging Proofpoint as a tool to help deliver social media compliance.   

SME-focused distributors, MSPs, and VARs looking to sell Proofpoint cloud-based email security solutions for small and medium-sized enterprises qualify for the Essentials partner program. 

Functioning as part of the Proofpoint Professional Services team, Proofpoint Extraction Partners have the expertise required to confidently migrate data from one email archiving solution to another. 

Proofpoint Use Case Statistics

A library of customer success stories shares the achievements reached using Proofpoint solutions, including a variety of usage-related statistics:

• 2.2 billion daily emails analyzed
• 35 billion daily URLs analyzed
• 200 million daily attachments analyzed
• 22 million cloud accounts monitored
• 46 thousand cloud applications cataloged
• 500 thousand daily unique malware samples discovered
• 400 million domains monitored daily
• 112 thousand social media accounts monitored
• 100 Threat actors tracked

User Reviews of Proofpoint

Reading the glowing reviews of the solutions provided by Proofpoint make it clear why it is “most deployed solution in the Fortune 100, Fortune 1000, and Global 2000.” 

Threat and intrusion protection is ranked by:

• G2: 4.4 out of 5
• TrustRadius: 8.7 out of 10

Email security is ranked by:

• Gartner Peer Insights: 4.5 out of 5
• G2: 4.6 out of 5
• TrustRadius: 8.4 out of 10 

Proofpoint client base

Proofpoint provides products and services to variety of companies:

• More than half of the Fortune “1000”
• The top five banks
• Seven of the top 10 global retailers
• Five of the top 10 global pharmaceutical companies
• 14 of the top 15 research universities

Industry involvement

Proofpoint demonstrates a dedication to the global cybersecurity community by hosting a considerable number of events that include summits, roundtables, and conferences. This commitment to giving back and sharing knowledge is further reinforced with a series of ebooks and whitepapers, podcasts, webinars, and blog posts.  

Proofpoint in the Cybersecurity Market 

Though many competitors face up against Proofpoint, email protection is their flagship, within which they enjoy a comfortable 30.25% of the market share.

While there may be a considerable number of big-name Proofpoint alternatives, none holds a threatening piece of the market share: 

• Mimecast Gateway 3.59%
• Symantec Email Security 2.96%
• Cisco Email Security 2.54%
• Microsoft Defender 1.81%
• Barracuda 0.72%
• Sophos Email Gateway 0.02%