The Challenge
- Empower employees in the field to ensure safety of children at risk
- Maximize business continuity for critical tools and applications
- Meet regulatory and e-discovery requirements through archiving
The Solution
- Proofpoint Intelligent Compliance Solutions
- Proofpoint Archive
- Proofpoint Discover
The Results
- Efficient archiving and e-discovery frees up staff to better support employees
- Easy-to-use system improves accessibility of records searches
- Responsive support keeps solution available and optimized

The Challenge
Empowering Agency Workers To Support Children at Risk
Moments matter when it comes to assuring child safety. That’s why the IT team for the MDCPS is committed to giving its workers the tools and support they need to respond to child welfare issues fast. Business continuity is critical for this 24x7 organization, so the technology team must ensure nonstop availability for all requests.
“We manage and maintain all of the applications and tools that our frontline workers use,” said David McBride, director of support services, MDCPS. “Our agency mission is to protect children and what we do aids in that. If any of our applications are down, then that would mean a social worker might not receive a call or an email about a child in need. So we need to maintain 100% uptime with our applications.”
With so much depending on its network, the IT team can’t afford any distractions as it tackles other responsibilities such as compliance, archiving, records management and security issues.
“We have to comply with the Mississippi Public Records Act of 1983, as well as Federal mandates such as the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA),” said Michael Pantin, CIO MDCPS. “We have to respond to records requests quickly, or we are subject to being sanctioned by the Mississippi Ethics Commission.”
To meet these demands, MDCPS was using archive and e-discovery tools that were built into its Microsoft 365 applications. However, working with them was slow, manual and cumbersome, which took time away from IT and its support for employees in the field. Pantin and his organization realized they needed a better platform that could help them ensure business continuity without compromising performance, compliance and security.
Michael Pantin, CIO, Mississippi Department of Child Protection Services
The Solution
A Better Approach to Protecting and Managing Data and Archives
When CIO Michael Pantin joined the organization, he was already familiar with Proofpoint capabilities, and knew that it would be an excellent fit for MDCPS.
“When I was IT Director at the Mississippi Public Service Commission, I went to some lunch-and-learn events, and heard about Proofpoint,” said Pantin. “I saw that it delivered the best-of-breed solution that we needed, and that’s what we went with.”
“When Michael Pantin joined our team, he said, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll be getting Proofpoint, and our problems will be solved,’” added McBride. “He could not have been more right.”
MDCPS deployed Proofpoint Intelligent Compliance solutions. This included Proofpoint Archive, a next-generation, cloud-powered archiving solution, offering built-in, high-performance search, export and legal hold. It also included Proofpoint Discover, which provides powerful capabilities, such as case management, which helps MDCPS improve its litigation readiness.
Unlike the previous Microsoft solution, Proofpoint puts e-discovery and archiving capabilities easily in reach for any user, without slow, time-consuming steps.
“In the past, I might have received a request to pull a certain timeframe or date range of communication between certain people,” said McBride. “First, I would have to make sure that we had access to the information, because Microsoft does a soft delete after 90 days. And second, I would have to search to see if the user is still active in our tenant, delegating permission to myself, then going into the user’s mailbox to pull the communication that was requested. However, if the user had been deleted, I would have to go through several steps to pull the file from deletion and load it onto a client to search.”
McBride added, “This is not the case with Proofpoint, as we now have all user communication within the archive, regardless of whether they are current employees or have left the organization.”
Proofpoint has made discovery and archiving capabilities simpler to use, and the IT team is taking advantage of their accessibility.
“Prior to onboarding Proofpoint, I would access discovery and archiving maybe once or twice a month,” said McBride. “Now we can use it several times a week as we work through our backlog of addressing e-discovery requests and internal investigations.”
The Results
More Time for IT Means More Time Assisting Children
Proofpoint has enabled the MDCPS to streamline its processes in many different ways. Saving time on compliance and other requirements frees the IT team to focus on keeping critical applications running at their best, which helps employees support the families they serve.
“We’ve seen strong improvements in search efficiency,” said McBride. “With Proofpoint, if I get a request, I can run it right away. It takes seconds to get my search results, which is a huge improvement over what I was experiencing using Microsoft tools. There’s no need to set aside time for tasks, such as checking my hard drive space availability or browsing a specific account to see if it is enabled. I can simply launch Proofpoint Archive and perform the search. Proofpoint has reduced the time we need to respond to e-discovery requests by more than 50 percent.”
Along with saving time, MDCPS has also dramatically improved accessibility and ease-of-use for its searches. Previously, individuals had to be proficient in structured query language (SQL) and know specific time frames to search successfully. The skill was not easily transferrable and limited the capabilities of the small staff.
“With Proofpoint, if we’re searching the archive for something, users don’t have to be extremely skillful using certain terms and connectors or even SQL to construct a search, and get the results they are looking for,” said McBride. “We can type in a few keywords, and the results that come back are usually what we are looking for. Its effectiveness is really powerful.”
The improved search capabilities also help MDCPS address potential security threats more quickly.
“The quality of results is better, and if a request comes in related to an insider threat issue, I’m able to pull the exact email, as well as any other correspondents that were copied,” said McBride. “We can take that to the team that requested it, see if we need to broaden our search scope to include more people, and determine how significant the threat is.” In addition to Proofpoint Archive and Proofpoint Discover, the department uses Proofpoint Insider Threat Management and other Proofpoint security technology.
MDCPS is already exploring ways it can extend the functionality of its Proofpoint solution to capture, retain and manage additional data. With Proofpoint, MDCPS knows it is prepared to address today’s business challenges—and those to come.