The Challenge
- Protect more than 2,500 email users from evolving threats
- Minimise time and tasks required for threat mitigation
- Strengthen internal awareness of security
The Solution
- Proofpoint Core Email Protection
The Results
- Advanced email protection detects and stops email threats quickly
- Solution can retract malicious emails that have been delivered to users' inboxes
- Automation empowers IT to save time and work more efficiently /li>
The Challenge
Upgrading ineffective email security
1-800-GOT-JUNK? makes the ordinary business of junk removal exceptional. Through its business and household services, the company removes anything from unwanted furniture and appliances to office, construction and manufacturing items. Committed to green practices, the company diverts items from landfills whenever possible, and donates them to charity and recycling.
1-800-GOT-JUNK? Is not only dedicated to protecting the environment, but its business systems and the employees and customers that use them.
“Protecting people is one of the keys with an industry like ours where there's a lot of people power,” said Binita Patel, cybersecurity manager at 1-800-GOT-JUNK?. “Based on our franchise model, we have a ton of users who interact with customers, different vendors and the companies that they service. When it comes to email security, a lot of our users were vulnerable.”
The organisation supports 2,567 users on the Google Mail platform. Although the company was using an email security service from Abnormal, the product could not provide the agility and accuracy it needed.
“I was observing the system and how it was analyzing the emails, and we spotted a one-hour delay after an email was delivered to a user’s mailbox, before the solution found that it was malicious and pulled it back,” said Patel. “In that one-hour period, we didn’t know if the user had clicked on the email, read it or taken any other actions. That delay made me realise that we needed a better email security solution.”
In some cases involving more sophisticated email threats, such as phishing and spoofing attacks, the delays with Abnormal were even longer.
“Our own domain was spoofed in one of the emails and it was not caught by the solution,” said Patel. “We had to manually analyse the email, report it back to the tool, and then pull everything back. That took a few hours.”
Email classification also posed issues. Abnormal would incorrectly classify many of the company’s messages as gray mail, or bulk email messages that are not spam. But gray mail messages required purchasing additional licensing, so the company had no way to manage them. Patel knew that it was time for a more accurate, efficient solution that could help her team secure and manage email.
Binita Patel, cybersecurity manager, 1-800-GOT-JUNK?
The Solution
Improving protection from sophisticated email threats
As Patel considered her options and arranged proof of concept (PoC) testing, Proofpoint Core Email Protection was a top choice. The solution uses AI-powered detection and automation to block advanced threats, such as business email compromise (BEC), ransomware and phishing.
“I had used Proofpoint in the past, so while I was looking at different solutions, Proofpoint was always in the back of my mind,” she explained. “We looked at it and it checked all the boxes, meeting all our needs.”
Proofpoint stacked up especially well when Patel tested it against the company’s existing email security solution.
“We were on a conference call with Proofpoint during the PoC, and we decided to examine a phishing email at random,” said Patel. “Proofpoint flagged it as a malicious email containing a link to malware. Abnormal, in contrast, did nothing, and simply delivered the email to the user’s inbox. We had to pull the email back manually using Google Mail tools.”
After confirming Proofpoint’s ability to stop email threats, Patel needed to be sure the solution would work smoothly within her company’s email systems.
“We knew that Proofpoint could do the email analysis that we wanted, but we also needed to test it within our environment,” said Patel. “We are a Google shop, and I had only used Proofpoint with Microsoft mail systems in the past. But happily, it worked very well.”
As part of its solution, the 1-800-GOT-JUNK? team also uses Proofpoint Threat Response Auto-Pull (TRAP). TRAP lets Patel and her team analyse emails and quarantine malicious or unwanted emails after they are delivered, further strengthening security and protection.
The Results
A more accurate, efficient approach to email security
Installing the new Proofpoint solution has helped 1-800-GOT-JUNK? move beyond the limitations of its previous email security. The solution is simple to use and gives Patel and her team more control over email, including pre-delivery, post-delivery and click-time protection.
“With Proofpoint, we know exactly what we need to do,” said Patel. “Whether there's a false positive or false negative, if we have to release emails, if we have to make sure that something is added to a safe list, or removed from a block list, we know what the steps are. With Abnormal, we did not have nearly as much control. We could not release emails, and there was only one remediation step, which was that emails would simply be trashed or moved to spam in the user's inbox.”
The intelligent automation in Proofpoint TRAP is also helping the company’s IT team save time in pulling back emails after delivery.
“Before, Abnormal was not doing any removals from the inbox,” said Patel. “We had to trigger the process, request a report, analyse it, and then use our Google tools to pull it back. With Proofpoint Core Email Protection, we can just search and pull a suspicious email back at the click of a button. You select all the emails to release, and the process takes just minutes, compared to one working day with Abnormal.”
Building on Proofpoint’s human-centric approach to email security, Patel and her team are working closely with users to adopt smarter, safer email handling practices. Communications and training have played an important role in the success of the solution.
“As we began putting the Proofpoint solution in place, we did a lot of internal communications,” said Patel. “We told our users that they would see a little banner to alert them about emails from people outside the organisation, or from people that hadn’t emailed them before. These small changes have made our people more aware about what to look for in spotting a malicious email.”
With Proofpoint Core Email Protection, Patel is confident in her ability to provide stronger, more proactive protection for her organisation—before and after email threats arrive.
