Microsoft Office 365: Enhancements for Enterprise Compliance - Meet Proofpoint's Newest Solution

On the heels of Microsoft's official global launch of Microsoft Office 365, the company's newest cloud-based offering that combines productivity apps with hosted Microsoft Exchange email, Proofpoint has introduced a new solution, Proofpoint Compliance for Office 365.

Proofpoint Compliance for Office 365 (Proofpoint's press release here) adds advanced, enterprise-class email privacy, data loss prevention, encryption and archiving/eDiscovery features to any Office 365 deployment.

While much of the coverage of Microsoft's introduction today has focused on the potential for Office 365 in the small- and medium-sized business market, Microsoft is also targeting the enterprise market with, "an array of choices, from simple email to comprehensive suites to meet the needs of midsize and large businesses, as well as government organizations."

Proofpoint specializes in meeting the advanced security and compliance needs of medium and large enterprises and understands that even in a well-specified product like Office 365, there are gaps between actual product functionality and the needs of large enterprises — especially those in regulated industries.

So, to that end, Compliance for Office 365 combines the features of Proofpoint Enterprise Privacy (data loss prevention, email encryption), Proofpoint Enterprise Archive (archiving and eDiscovery) and Proofpoint Enterprise Protection (inbound/outbound email security) to greatly extend the core security and compliance features of Office 365's messaging environment.

In short, it helps ensure compliance for a wide variety of data protection and privacy mandates including the "alphabet soup" of HIPAA/HITECH, SOX, GLBA, PCI, FERPA, FINRA and SEC regulations.

Proofpoint followers won't really be surprised by this, as the concept is very similar to the work we already do with many large Microsoft BPOS customers such as the USDA.

To learn more about the features of Compliance for Office 365, check out our new product page or register for our July 20th live web seminar, Microsoft Office 365: Meeting Encryption, Privacy and Compliance Requirements, where we'll detail the compliance and security features that come built into Office 365, and  how those match to enterprise requirements for data protection and privacy.

For the PDF-minded, we also have a new datasheet on Compliance for Office 365.