The Municipality of Anchorage Alaska
Municipality of Anchorage Puts the Freeze on Spam with Proofpoint Messaging Security Gateway.™
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
The Municipality of Anchorage Alaska was
faced with a serious challenge – its network
was being overrun with spam, with employees
receiving an average of 100 unwanted
emails each day, many of which contained
offensive content. As a result, employees
were forced to spend an enormous amount
of time sifting through their inboxes and
deleting unwanted messages, to ensure
they didn't accidentally remove a critical
email from a constituent. In addition, the
IT staff was devoting precious resources in
an unsuccessful attempt to try to keep up
with the high levels of spam with a homegrown
solution.
PROOFPOINT SOLUTION
Based on a strong recommendation from
Gartner, the Municipality of Anchorage selected
the Proofpoint Messaging Security
Gateway to remove the massive amounts
of spam affecting its 2,700 email users.
RESULTS ACHIEVED
The Proofpoint Messaging Security Gateway
removed spam with 99% effectiveness
immediately after deployment. In addition,
the Municipality of Anchorage has not experienced
any false positives and has eliminated
nearly all spam-related burdens on
its IT staff.
PRODUCTS DEPLOYED
There isn't any maintenance or
monitoring required with Proofpoint.
The product has commanded no
more than fi ve minutes of my
attention on any given day, freeing
me up to focus on what I'm paid to
do. Compared to all of the time we
used to invest in managing spam,
the entire process is very simple
now.
Jose Roman,
Network Technician
Municipality of Anchorage
PROTECTING EMPLOYEES FROM OFFENSIVE CONTENT
IS A PRIORITY Incorporated as a city in 1920, the Municipality of Anchorage is now the largest city in
Alaska with more than a quarter million residents. The IT department at the Municipality
of Anchorage was receiving an infl ux of complaints from employees about the massive
amounts of spam fl ooding their inboxes each morning. Not only was the sheer volume
of unwanted messages frustrating staff, due
to the amount of time devoted to deleting the
spam, but much of the content was offensive,
adding to the complaints and opening up the
organization to potential legal issues.
According to Jose Roman, a network technician with the Municipality of Anchorage, spam was also draining productivity out of his division. “The IT staff was devoting huge amounts of time to keeping up with the growing amount of spam, but we weren't able to get ahead of the problem. We were doing a lot of leg work each day, such as creating rules in Microsoft Outlook in an attempt to block spam, but it wasn't enough.”
Employees were asked to forward spam messages to the organization's help desk for review, but the process became too much for the staff to handle. According to Roman, “No one had time to deal with all of the spamrelated issues and we kept falling further and further behind.”
Roman continued, “At least 70% of our incoming email was spam and we just didn't have an adequate way to manage or eliminate it. With the majority of incoming mail originating from our constituents, we need a better solution to weed out spam messages, and fast.”
WELL ARMED TO FIGHT THE SPAM BATTLE
After the Municipality of Anchorage realized the severity of its spam problem, the organization
decided to implement technology to more effectively fight the spam battle. The
organization sought input from analyst firm Gartner about messaging security technologies
and received a strong recommendation for Proofpoint.
Based on this feedback, the Municipality of Anchorage selected Proofpoint's Messaging Security Gateway and immediately deployed the appliance. The product was up and running in just one day and produced immediate results. “Across our 2,700 email users, 99% of the spam dried up within 24 hours of using Proofpoint,” according to Roman.
The organization found the Proofpoint appliance very easy to fi ne tune and did some minor tweaking during the first two weeks to get the configurations set to their satisfaction and to eliminate any risk of false positives.
PROOFPOINT WINS RAVE REVIEWS
As a result of using the Proofpoint Messaging Security Gateway, employees at the
Municipality of Anchorage are only receiving legitimate emails and the IT staff can focus
on more strategic projects. The organization has been impressed with how easily the
Proofpoint appliance integrated into its existing infrastructure and the overall effectiveness
of the product.
“There isn't any maintenance or monitoring required with Proofpoint. The product has commanded no more than five minutes of my attention on any given day, freeing me up to focus on what I'm paid to do,” said Roman. “Compared to all of the time we used to invest in managing spam, the entire process is very simple now.”
Employees are also feeling the benefits of the Proofpoint installation. Prior to selecting Proofpoint, Roman compiled a list of the ten employees most affected by spam. He then solicited their feedback once the Proofpoint Messaging Security Gateway was in place to ensure that their inboxes were spam-free. Indeed this was the case: “All of the employees were very impressed with the fact that Proofpoint made the spam disappear. In addition, we have not had any issues with false positives, another big plus in the eyes of our staff.”
Roman has also been impressed with Proofpoint's support on both the sales and product side. “Since we've started working with Proofpoint, the response from employees has been nothing but positive. We've been very pleased with the outcome and the fact that spam has become a nonissue for us.”
ABOUT MUNICIPALITY OF ANCHORAGE
Incorporated as a city in 1920, the Municipality
of Anchorage is now the largest city
in Alaska with more than a quarter million
residents.
