Schnuck Markets
Schnuck Markets, inc. Makes Spam Email Vanish Instantly with Proofpoint Messaging Security Gateway
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
Employees and executives of a large supermarket
chain were being inundated
with hundreds of thousands of spam
emails each day. The IT staff tried configuring
its users' Microsoft Outlook clients
to block the influx of spam, but that method
proved ineffective and burdensome.
PROOFPOINT SOLUTION
Schnuck Markets, Inc. undertook an audit
of their messaging infrastructure with assistance
from Proofpoint, Inc., which showed
that the top ten spam recipients were getting
hundreds of unwanted emails per day.
This audit provided clear evidence that an
enterprise-grade anti- spam solution was
necessary. Ultimately, the company chose
to deploy the Proofpoint Messaging Security
Gateway™.
RESULTS ACHIEVED
With minimal tuning of the Proofpoint
solution, Schnucks reduced the amount of
spam in employee inboxes by 98%. Even
with more than 1,300 email users served,
very few false positives were reported.
Schnucks has found Proofpoint to be so
accurate and reliable that it even went
so far as to forgo the forwarding of
quarantined messages.
PRODUCTS DEPLOYED
The It sold itself. It stopped
spam and objectionable
content, completely and
immediately. That's exactly
what we needed.
Jim Mueller
Director of IT,
OVERSTOCKED WITH SPAM Headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri, Schnuck Markets, Inc. is a large, family-owned
supermarket chain. The company employs approximately 16,000 associates in 99 stores
across six (and soon to be seven) states in the Midwest. Schnucks has been in operation
since 1939.
Spam, increasing in number and frequency, threatened employee productivity at Schnucks by clogging email inboxes at both the corporate office and branch locations. When the CEO's secretary noted that she was receiving as many as 400 spam messages per day, Jim Mueller, Schnucks' Director of IT, knew something had to be done to curb the volume.
The right system with no heavy lifting
Schnucks evaluated several leading anti-spam solutions
before selecting the Proofpoint Messaging Security
Gateway, a comprehensive hardware and software
solution based on the Proofpoint Protection Server™.
The Proofpoint system protects corporate messaging
infrastructures from external email threats, such as
spam and viruses, and ensures compliance with corporate
email policies and external regulations.
For Schnucks, the decision to go with the Proofpoint appliance was simple. “Before we had even purchased the system, Proofpoint helped us perform a spam audit, which gave us quantitative data on exactly how much spam we were receiving,” said Mueller. “That data played a critical role in helping management understand how necessary it was to invest in anti-spam technology. It also helped eliminate any risk or uncertainty from the purchasing process.”
According to Mueller, manageability also played a key role in the selection of Proofpoint over other vendors' offerings. The “plug-and-play” nature of the Proofpoint appliance allowed Schnucks to quickly deploy the anti-spam solution and stop unwanted messages. “We deployed the Proofpoint box and had to do very little configuration. Our employees, in every department from general merchandise to pharmacy, subscribe to a number of media newsgroups or newsletters. Proofpoint allows these to automatically come through without configuration changes on our end. This saves us a lot of time.”
CHECK-OUT TIME
The Proofpoint Messaging Security Gateway was an overwhelming success right from
the start. From the moment the system was live at Schnucks, Mueller received reports
from users across the company saying they were no longer getting spam. Legitimate
emails, however, were still getting through. This high level of accuracy is due to Proofpoint's
MLX™ Machine Learning technology,
which classifies Schnucks' incoming
email as spam or valid mail based on the
analysis of more than 100,000 message
attributes – roughly twenty times greater
than the number of attributes analyzed by
most other anti-spam solutions.
And while the most obvious benefit to Schnucks is simple – no more spam – Proofpoint has also provided the company with a host of other advantages, including:
- Reduction in email traffic, which has taken pressure off of Schnuck's mail servers, allowing normal business functions to be completed more quickly; and
- Virus protection at the gateway, reducing the need for additional hardware and software to secure the company against virus attacks.
Proofpoint's offering was especially attractive to Schnucks because, with 99 locations to support, the supermarket chain relies on a largely distributed environment. The fact that Proofpoint Protection Server stops spam at the gateway—preventing unwanted messages from ever reaching the company's 1,300 desktops—guarantees an extra layer of protection and simplifies maintenance.
Most importantly to Schnucks, the Proofpoint Protection Server was available on a hardened appliance. Mueller found the Proofpoint Messaging Security Gateway incredibly easy to deploy – it was simply a matter of plugging it in. And the appliance allowed for hands-off management, something Mueller could appreciate given the number of email boxes he oversees on a daily basis.
Mueller has no reservations about the ROI he has seen using Proofpoint. “It sold itself. It stopped spam and objectionable content, completely and immediately. That's exactly what we needed.”
ABOUT SCHNUCK MARKETS
Founded in St. Louis in 1939, Schnuck
Markets, Inc. currently operates 100 stores
(including five Logli stores) and 93 pharmacies
in Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin,
Tennessee and Mississippi. The family-
owned company is ranked 80th in the
Forbes Magazine listing of the nation's
“Largest Private Companies.”
