Learn More about Your Obligations to Archive Email with this InsideCounsel Webinar Replay

Proofpoint's senior director of eDiscovery solutions, Robert Cruz, recently presented a web seminar with legal publication InsideCounsel.

In "What are Your Obligations to Retain Email and Other Forms of Electronic Content?", Robert discusses the content retention challenges faced by organizations in the midst of stringent litigation and regulatory compliance demands, and offers practical advice for how to address those challenges.

Topic covered included:

• Key legal, business and regulatory drivers for archiving email and other electronic content
• The impact of regulations—including FINRA, HIPAA and newer or less well known regulations—on your organization’s retention policies
• Recommendations for taking a proactive approach to content retention and litigation hold procedures
• Given the sweeping impact of the Dodd Frank Wall Street Reform Act and introduction of "preventative compliance," what steps can you take to prepare your organization for greater regulatory information access and transparency?
• How organizations in both regulated and previously non-regulated industries are tackling retention challenges

To watch this replay now (no registration required!) visit the following link:

http://webcast.streamlogics.com/audience/index.asp?eventid=52552431 

New eDiscovery Case Study and Video: Wedbush Securities Uses Proofpoint to Streamline Archiving and eDiscovery

Keeping with our eDiscovery and archiving theme this week, Proofpoint published a new press release and case study about customer Wedbush Securities, a leading financial services firm. Wedbush uses Proofpoint solutions for email security (Proofpoint Enterprise Protection) as well as email archiving and eDiscovery (Proofpoint Enterprise Archive).

The new case study (click the image at left to view the actual PDF version) focuses on how Wedbush replaced its outdated email archiving solution with Proofpoint's SaaS solution with the goals of making archiving and eDiscovery more user friendly, more efficient and better satisfying SEC/FINRA supervision requirements.

Wedbush's director of IT, Mattias Tornyi, says, "I think the performance around eDiscovery is really a big benefit, and something that we wouldn’t get with an in-house solution. I can do any type of search through the system, and know I am getting a response time within 30 seconds. It’s so easy to use and very efficient for IT, Compliance and Legal to perform discovery searches now."

Regular blog readers will recall that I recently posted a video interview with Jeff Bell, the executive VP of clearing and technology for Wedbush Securities talking about how his organization uses Proofpoint. I've included that video again, below, as well as a new "part 2" of that interview where Jeff discusses some of the other security and IT issues (including phishing, mobility and training) that are most on his mind today. Here's part one:

   

And here's part two:

 



Note that you can find more customer case studies in our online learning center and more Proofpoint videos in our YouTube channel.

eDiscovery and Archiving 2011: New CEO Series Video and Top Ten Predictions

eDiscovery and archiving are top-of-mind at Proofpoint today as we issued our predictions about the top ten trends in eDiscovery for 2011. As part of that announcement, we've published a new CEO series video where Gary Steele discusses "Three Key Trends in Archiving and eDiscovery."

 

Check out the video and then read on after the jump for our top 10 eDiscovery trends for 2011 (see the "Click to Jump" button below...)

Hosted, SaaS, Cloud-based Services: What's the Difference?

First, "Good question!" And second, "Why did I ask this in the first place?"

Ran across two things recently that inspired me to write on this topic...

One:In doing a little research into how web surfers find Proofpoint and the Proofpoint Email Security blog, I discovered some interesting statistics (and regular readers know how I love statistics).

Proofpoint generally describes its solutions as being "Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)" — because that really is the best description for our "on-demand" type offerings — or, in the case of things that are deployed on-premises (like email security appliances) as "cloud-enabled" (because they leverage various cloud services that we've built).

But it turns out that a lot of individuals, when looking for "not on-premises" solutions, use the term "hosted" in their searches. 

For example, Google's search engine reports 85% more searches for "hosted email encryption" than for "SaaS email encryption." In the case of "email archiving" almost 5 times as many users search for "hosted email archiving" over "SaaS email archiving". And for "email security" we see 6 times as many searches for "hosted email security" as for "SaaS email security."

I have to say that I was surprised by these differences. Much higher than I had expected! So, should we just call these things "hosted" and get on with it?

I don't think so...  And here's why...

Two: I recently became aware of a cool blog called Enterprise Features that touches on a lot of the same topics we cover here (see for example, this very interesting interview about Wikileaks and corporate privacy) where I read a really nice summary of the differences between the "hosted" and "SaaS" concepts.

In, "The Difference Between Hosted, SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) and the Cloud," technology blogger Paul Rudo writes, "the most obvious difference between 'SaaS applications' and 'hosted applications' is that one is a 'service' that you use, and the other is a 'product' that you own."

He notes also that there's "some overlap between SaaS applications and hosted applications. You can reasonably say that all SaaS services are hosted, but it would not be accurate to say that all hosted applications are SaaS."

He goes on to give a very easy to understand example around hosting a Wordpress blog versus subscribing to the SaaS version of Wordpress. (Rather than cribbing his entire article, I encourage you to read it here.) In the hosted case, he notes that there might be more control and flexibility, but there's also more maintenance effort. In the SaaS case,  one is taking advantage of the service that Wordpress offers, possibly losing some flexibility but gaining much in the way of convenience, security and lowered total cost of ownership.

It's a great description, but I'd also point out that SaaS solutions also have an element of shared services to them (and this is one of the primary ways that SaaS reduces TCO).

As an example, in the Proofpoint Enterprise Archive SaaS email archiving solution, we leverage a huge grid of servers to enable very rapid searches across an organization's entire mail archive and we guarantee that — no matter how large one's archive grows or how complex the search query — search results will be returned in 20 seconds or less. While each organization's data is held in strict isolation, all customers have access to this elastic pool of computing resources to perform discovery. 

This would be very hard and costly to replicate in a purely "hosted" model. Sure, you could "rack and stack" some archiving appliances in a remote datacenter, but you'd have to buy much more hardware than you would need on a day-to-day basis to ensure that same level of performance. 

I could go on, but I think you can see that the difference between "SaaS" and "hosted" solutions isn't purely a semantic one.

Readers, what do you think? We're always interested in your comments!

Back to my first point, I think it's going to take some time before this difference is fully understood. And, until that time, I guess I have to occasionally call what we do "hosted" simply to expose more people to the concept.

So, how about some resources about "hosted security and compliance" topics? Here are three great whitepapers that address the advantages of various SaaS hosted security versus an on-premises approach:

• Hosted Email Security whitepaper »
• Hosted Email Archiving whitepaper »
• Hosted Email Encryption whitepaper »

 

Join Us December 8 for a Live Email Archiving Web Seminar with Osterman Research

Our live web seminar series continues on Wednesday, December 8th, 2010 with "What are your Obligations to Retain Email and Other Electronic Content?"

Analyst Michael Osterman of Osterman Research will join us to talk about findings from his recent report on the same topic. He'll discuss the business, litigation and regulatory compliance drivers that require organizations of all sizes and every industry to establish retention policies for email and other types of electronic documents.

Mike's report includes a summary of more than 50 regulations that require archiving of digital content. But as Mike notes in his report, there are still some organizations that are resistant to archiving such information.

"Unlike their regulated counterparts, organizations in so-called 'non-regulated' industries tend to believe that their electronic content retention obligations are minimal at best," he writes. "They believe electronic content should be deleted regularly to reduce the risk of liability in the event of a lawsuit or regulatory audit. They fear such content may contain 'smoking guns' that might reveal poor judgment by organizational decision makers or rogue employees... Contrary to what such decision-makers may think, no organization operating in the United States, regardless of size or industry, is immune from the obligation to retain electronic content in accordance with the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure."

Come learn the facts about why archiving email and other digital content is important for every type of organization.

As an added incentive, attendees who take our short survey at the end of the live event will be entered in a random drawing to win a new Apple iPod Nano... Just in time for the holidays!

Register for "What are your Obligations to Retain Email and Other Electronic Content?" here.

 

SaaS Email and Security Insights from New Osterman Research Report

Osterman Research published a really interesting new report this week (available to subscribers of Osterman's research service) on SaaS Messaging Market Trends 2010-2013. Analyst Mike Osterman (follow him on Twitter as @mosterman) has kindly allowed me to share a few of the findings from that report with our readers.

These findings were based on a survey of 132 messaging decision makers at mid- and large-sized organizations in North America.

SaaS Adoption to Increase Rapidly

The chart at left (click for larger image) shows Osterman's forecast for the growth in various SaaS email-related services in the North American market. Currently, SaaS email security solutions have the highest level of adoption (about one-third of organizations). Through 2013, SaaS email/content archiving and SaaS email encryption services will experience the greatest growth.

The report notes that SaaS isn't just for small businesses anymore, pointing to examples such as GlaxoSmithKline (which migrated 110,000 users to Microsoft's hosted BPOS (Business Productivity Online Suite), State of California (migrating 200,000 employees to Microsoft's cloud-based email services), City of Los Angeles and Panasonic.

 Many Feel that SaaS Security is Better than On-Premises Security

Concerns about the relative security of SaaS solutions versus on-premises solutions seem to be subsiding. The survey found that almost four out of five decision makers believes that SaaS providers offer a level of security at least as good as that of internally managed systems. Additionally, more than one quarter of respondents believe that SaaS security is superior to on-premises security.

More after the jump...

SaaS Security and Compliance Market Continues to be Hot: Proofpoint Hits 29th Record Revenue Quarter

In its traditional quarterly results press release issued today, Proofpoint summarized business results from Q3 2010. The security market overall continues to see strong growth—and the SaaS/cloud computing segment of that market is especially hot. Proofpoint is at the forefront of both trends, of course, and recorded an amazing 29th consecutive quarter of record revenue.

Proofpoint's announcement points out several business drivers that helped the company achieve another record-breaking quarter, including: (1) strong adoption of it SaaS email archiving and eDiscovery solutions among enterprises and federal government agencies; (2) increasing demand for privacy and email encryption; (3) record renewal and add-on business from existing customers.

Proofpoint CEO Gary Steele noted that, "Throughout 2010, we’ve seen increasing enterprise interest in SaaS, concerns around compliance and data privacy issues and awareness of the importance of eDiscovery as significant drivers for our business and the third quarter of 2010 was no exception.”

The company notes that it won an extremely large US federal government deal for email archiving, which will be the biggest initial deployment of Proofpoint Enterprise Archive thus far—securely archiving email for more than 100,000 users. Proofpoint also reports that its email encryption solution, launched just one year ago, has been the most successful product introduction in the company's history, pointing to new wins at some of the world's largest healthcare and financial services organizations.

While newer concerns around regulatory compliance, data loss prevention and eDiscovery have been important parts of Proofpoint's ongoing growth, the company remains focused on its core email security business, helping organizations stop spam, phishing, malware and other email-borne threats.

Email threats continue to evolve (recent examples include the VBmania worm and malicious HTML attachments)  and Proofpoint has worked hard to keep effectiveness high and ensure that customers remain satisfied with the protection provided by its anti-spam and anti-malware solutions.

To this point, Steele noted, "Proofpoint has continued to focus on maintaining its best-of-breed anti-spam effectiveness. That played a large part in ensuring extremely high customer satisfaction and record renewal business in Q3, even through one of the most challenging threat environments in recent memory.” 

For more details on Proofpoint's business during the quarter, see the full press release at the link below:

Press Release: SaaS Security and Compliance Leader Proofpoint, Inc. Reports Q3 2010 Results, Marking 29 Consecutive Quarters of Record Revenue


 

A Bumper Crop of New Email Security, Email Archiving & Data Loss Prevention Resources

Ah, it must be harvest season because there's a whole bunch of new collateral cropping up on the Proofpoint website. Visit the products and solutions section (look for the orange "DATASHEET >" button on individual product pages) or our learning center where you'll find that links to datasheets pop up with new content hot off the virtual presses.

These join the new and revised datasheets for Proofpoint Enterprise Protection, Proofpoint Enterprise Privacy and Proofpoint Enterprise Archive that have been available for a while now.

Now, there are new datasheets for:

• Proofpoint Encryption: Our SaaS-powered email encryption solution (also included with Proofpoint Enteprise Privacy). Datasheet >
  
  
• Proofpoint Secure File Transfer: Our secure/managed file transfer solution (makes quick work of getting supersized attachments out of your mail stream and into a secure, controlled repository). Datasheet >
  
  
• Proofpoint Smart Search: Our advanced message tracing, forensics and log analytics solution. Datasheet>

If you explore further into the "TECHNOLOGIES" section of our products pages, you'll find new technology briefs (again, click the "DATASHEET >" link on each page) about the various anti-spam, anti-virus and data loss prevention technologies for regulatory compliance and digital asset security that Proofpoint employs.

And, "just one more thing..." As I mentioned in my previous post, we published a new whitepaper entitled, "Why Email Archiving and eDiscovery are More Important than Ever."

While it's aimed at financial services organizations, this short paper is useful for any organization that wants to learn more about both regulations and best practices that relate to electronic discovery and email archiving.

 



Video: Wedbush Securities on Using Proofpoint Email Security and Email Archiving Solutions

Proofpoint customer Jeff Bell, executive vice president of clearing and technology for financial services firm Wedbush Securities, was kind enough to host me at his San Francisco office recently and allowed me to interview him about his use of Proofpoint's email security and compliance solutions.

Wedbush has been using Proofpoint for email security since 2004 (protecting more than 1000 employees) and recently added our SaaS email archiving solution, Proofpoint Enterprise Archive. Wedbush Securities is a leading financial services and investment firm that provides private and institutional brokerage, correspondent clearing, investment banking, equities research, public finance, fixed income sales and trading, and asset management to individual, institutional and issuing clients.

As such, there are a host of email retention regulations with which they have to comply. While we don't get into that in the video, Proofpoint has just published a new email archiving whitepaper that gives a good overview of the regulatory and best practices drivers for using email archiving technology in financial services firms (see, "Why Email Archiving and eDiscovery are More Important than Ever" to download a copy).

  

 Jeff and I also discussed his views on other IT threats that are on his radar and I'll share that video in a future post.

And by the way, if you're a Proofpoint customer and would like to share your Proofpoint story, we're always happy to hear from you! Drop us a line at pr@proofpoint.com.

New Email Archiving Whitepaper: What Are Your Obligations to Retain Email and Other Electronic Content?

In partnership with Osterman Research, we've just made available a new whitepaper on email archiving and the retention of email  and other types of electronic content.

"What Are Your Obligations to Retain Email and Other Electronic Content?" explains the various litigation readiness and regulatory compliance requirements faced by enterprises in both regulated and non-regulated industries.

One of my favorite features of this new paper is a great appendix that lists and briefly summarizes more than 50 different industry and government regulations that require retention of various forms of electronic content.

Visit the download page for this email archiving whitepaper »

To learn more about Proofpoint's SaaS solution for email archiving, visit our Proofpoint Enterprise Archive product page.