Today, in an announcement issued from our booth at RSA (#1132), Proofpoint introduced the latest update to our SaaS email security and data loss prevention platform, Proofpoint 6.1.
New features in Proofpoint 6.1 include support for mutli-protocol (HTTP, HTTPS) data loss prevention, a new data loss prevention dashboard (pictured at left - click for a larger image), encryption enhancements including an Outlook plug-in for the Proofpoint Encryption solution and a variety of other security and performance enhancements.
You can check out the full press release, which has a lot more detail, here:
The cavalcade of press coverage coming out of this year's RSA Conference is just starting to appear. One of the things that happened today was a meeting of the Cloud Security Alliance and InformationWeek's George Hulme has a great summary of two interesting initiatives coming out of that meeting.
Hulme says, "I see both the Trusted Cloud Initiative and CloudAudit as an inflection point in the cloud security discussion. The industry is now moving beyond vague discussions and arguments surrounding the many security and regulatory compliance problems that arise from cloud computing – to taking concrete steps to address them."
The whole article is worth a read if you're interested in security issues around cloud computing and SaaS.
RSA Conference 2010 exhibits open tonight and we're looking forward to seeing any of you who are attending! Find Proofpoint at booth #1132. When you stop by, please take a moment to take our quick email security survey and we'll give you one of our classic "Defend Email" t-shirts.
Also, we're giving away a $500 Apple gift card to one lucky visitor, so make sure you drop by and get your badge scanned. See you there!
Just a reminder that our live web seminar series continues tomorrow with, "SaaS and the Global 2000: Best Practices for Buying Security-as-a-Service." Proofpoint SaaS expert Dave Champine will discuss why large enterprises are increasingly turning to the cloud to maximize ROI and meet today’s email security and archiving challenges, and share the best practices that large enterprises should follow when buying SaaS security solutions.
Check out the video in this post for a preview.
Join us on Wednesday, February 10 at 2:00 p.m. ET / 11:00 a.m. PT. As always, if you can't make it to the live event, we always share a replay with registered attendees. To register, please visit:
ChannelWeb has a new slideshow out today highlighting the "20 Coolest Cloud Security Vendors" including Proofpoint. As ChannelWeb's editors note, over the last couple of years there's been a strong trend in the enterprise toward moving various security features to the cloud and a "tough economy" has only increased that momentum.
"Proofpoint offers its comprehensive Enterprise service, based on the same platform powering its Messaging Security Gateway appliances and incorporates DLP, spam filtering and e-mail archiving services. Its hosted e-mail service, Proofpoint Protect, is also an easy-to-use, low-cost inbound e-mail security product designed for organizations that don't require outbound data privacy and e-mail encryption features. The company distinguishes itself with its single management and policy console powered by Proofpoint MLX technology, an advanced machine learning system."
It's great to be named as one of the "Coolest Cloud Security Vendors," but if you're an enterprise IT buyer, the sheer number of vendors offering SaaS and cloud-based can be exceptionally confusing. If you have questions about how to best go about evaluating and comparing SaaS security solutions, you won't want to miss our February live web seminar:
Proofpoint's Dave Champine will share best practices that enterprises should follow when evaluating cloud-based security solutions, including how to address concerns around (and evaluate vendor's approaches to) security, scalability and availability. Some case studies from Proofpoint's own extensive customer base of Global 2000 organizations will be presented as examples.
And if you're not sure about this whole cloud security thing, might I suggest you check out the following Osterman Research whitepapers that discuss the cost savings and other benefits that can be had by adopting SaaS approaches to email security and email archiving? See:
Our next Proofpoint live web seminar is, "SaaS and the Global 2000: Best Practices for Buying Security-as-a-Service." Proofpoint SaaS expert Dave Champine will discuss why large enterprises are increasingly turning to the cloud to maximize ROI and meet today’s email security and archiving challenges, and share the best practices that large enterprises should follow when buying SaaS security solutions.
While Dave will be focusing on the needs of larger enterprises, this should be a great overview for any company looking to move email security, email archiving, email encryption, data loss prevention or other security functions to a SaaS model.
Join us on Wednesday, February 10 at 2:00 p.m. ET / 11:00 a.m. PT. And remember, if you can't make it to the live event, we always share a replay with registered attendees. To register, please visit:
For reasons we discuss regularly in this blog, more and more enterprises are choosing to move email security functions "to the cloud" and today's announcement from Proofpoint offers yet another example.
Headquartered globally in Paris, web and audio conferencing vendor Arkadin found that its previous on-premises email security solution was suffering from poor anti-spam accuracy and imposing too many administrative burdens on IT staff. So they looked for new solutions that provided better effectiveness versus email-borne threats as well as reduced administration time and reduced TCO.
Arkadin found that adopting Proofpoint's SaaS email security solution gave them the features and savings they were looking for, without sacrificing control and customizability. Proofpoint ENTERPRISE now protects 1000 Arkadin end-user inboxes worldwide. Says Arnaud Lejeune, executive president of operations for Arkadin:
“We needed an email security solution with better performance that was also reliable and easy to manage. Proofpoint ENTERPRISE delivered on all of those requirements and more. By moving to Proofpoint’s cloud computing-based email security solution, we’ve greatly reduced our costs, effectiveness in stopping spam has been incredible and performance is guaranteed by service level agreements. It’s the perfect solution for enterprises faced with these problems.”
Arkadin’s information services team was also impressed by level of customization enabled by Proofpoint’s SaaS email security solution.
“Even though it’s a SaaS solution, Proofpoint ENTERPRISE gives us a level of control and configurability comparable to on-premises appliances,” said Jean-Claude Asseufi, global IS support manager at Arkadin. “Everything is managed by a centralized, Web-based management console, so we can easily make changes and get complete visibility into our email systems.”
If you'd like to learn more about the advantages of moving email security to the cloud and tips on what large enterprises should look for when buying security-as-a-service, register for our next live web seminar at the following link:
There's a good article over at Silicon.com today on "Why CIOs and CFOs are Learning to Love the Cloud."In the article, Gartner analyst Dave Aron says that virtualization, cloud computing and web 2.0 technologies are at the top of CIO investment agendas in 2010.
Among the reasons he cites for growing adoption of cloud computing-based IT solutions are cost savings ("doing more with what you've got as opposed to continually driving for less"), relative maturity of both the cloud and web 2.0 technologies ("they're more ready for prime time... not just marketing hype") and the desire to move "certain infrastructure or management responsibilities and capabilities outside" of the organization.
You can read the whole article here:
Silicon.com: Why CIOs and CFOs are Learning to Love the Cloud
You're probably aware that Proofpoint has some similar resources. If you'd like to learn more about this trend as it related to email security and email archiving, check out the whitepapers available as a free download from:
Enterprise SaaS and cloud computing issues are also the subject of Proofpoint's next live web seminar, being held on Wednesday, February 10, 2010. Learn more and register at the following link:
Proofpoint CEO Gary Steele (pictured at left) has an interesting article published this week in Information Management, where he discusses the "Great Cloud Rush of 2009." As Information Management says in their teaser for this article, a "seismic shift in business processes and company culture is necessary to successfully offer cloud services."
Gary argues that, in order to capitalize on the demand for such solutions, vendors of traditional "on-premises" software and appliance products will have to fundamentally change the way they develop, sell and support their products. There's some great advice in this article for vendors looking to move to SaaS as well as customers who are considering adopting SaaS solutions. Here's an excerpt:
"In the rush to meet this demand, many vendors who previously provided only on-premises software or appliance-based solutions are jumping on the cloud computing bandwagon. However, are vendors really grasping the business implications and embracing the changes required to deliver cloud services? Or are they simply repositioning themselves as cloud providers? Just because you have a shovel and pan in gold country, does not make you a successful gold miner.
There are fundamental business changes required that often go overlooked until mistakes are made. Many businesses have to rethink their models and re-engineer their teams, as well as their products, from the ground up. During this time of profound change, these changes will be significant and run deep and wide throughout organizations."
You can read the full article at Information Management here:
Proofpoint's recent research on attitudes toward cloud computing among IT professionals (conducted with Osterman Research) has been covered in other outlets toward the end of last year, but in case you missed it, CIO Today has a good, brief summary of the findings at the following link:
Among the findings reported by CIO Today: "Nearly 40 percent of respondents said they were confused by the term [cloud computing] and its many different definitions... The study also found professionals split over concerns about the cloud's security, with many unconvinced of its fiscal benefits."
One of the biggest trends we've seen in the last year at Proofpoint is an increasing willingness, especially at large enterprises, to move some or all of their email security and compliance functions to the cloud. But buying cloud-based security solutions is somewhat different from buying on-premises solutions and we find that most organizations can use some pointers on what to look for when evaluating the quality and security of different "security-as-a-service" solutions.
I sat down recently with Dave Champine, Proofpoint's product manager for our SaaS email security solutions who provides some tips about how to evaluate cloud computing-based solutions and the issues enterprises should consider when moving security functions "to the cloud." You can watch that video embedded below.
