Lincoln Memorial University
The Challenge
- Stop phishing attacks to prevent credential theft
- Prevent university communications from being blocked
- Respond faster to potential incidents
- Protect sensitive patient and financial data from loss
The Solution
- Proofpoint Email Protection
- Proofpoint Targeted Attack Protection with URL Defense
- Proofpoint Email Encryption
- Proofpoint Email DLP
The Results
- Reduced phishing and unauthorized mass mailings to nearly zero, stopping advanced threats from reaching users’ mailboxes
- Automated data loss prevention and encryption and gained detailed reporting without affecting the user experience
- Saved hours and days of time dealing with phishing attempts and remediation
- Respond up to 60 percent faster to stop or remediate a potential incident
The Challenge
Lincoln Memorial University was founded in 1897 as a memorial to America’s 16th president, Abraham Lincoln. Today, it’s a private four-year liberal arts college with almost 4,000 students working toward undergraduate, graduate, and professional degrees. With students and faculty members increasingly targeted by phishing attacks, the university chose Proofpoint for greater protection and peace of mind.
“Phishing was our biggest problem,” said Clandis Smith, Network Administrator at Lincoln Memorial University. “Phishing emails got through our Barracuda filtering solution and tempted students, faculty, and staff to click on malicious links.”
Download the case study to learn how Proofpoint protects Lincoln Memorial University from advanced threats in email while also protecting data being sent out from the University.
“Proofpoint delivers one of the best email protection solutions that I’ve used,” said Smith. “It covers our bases completely, and we don’t worry about email defenses anymore.”
Clandis Smith, Network Administrator
The Solution
PROTECTING USERS AND ACCELERATING RESPONSE
The IT team began looking for a spam filter replacement to deliver better email protection. After considering Proofpoint, Mimecast, and McAfee solutions, Lincoln Memorial University chose Proofpoint to help protect users and data. “Attacks increasingly target individuals,” said Smith. “We chose Proofpoint because the company and its solutions are mature, and it’s an acknowledged leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for secure email gateways.” The university built its new defenses on Proofpoint Email Protection to protect the university from unwanted and malicious email. Email Protection gives the IT team detailed visibility and email continuity in the event of an outage. Proofpoint Targeted Attack Protection (TAP) adds strong protection against advanced email threats that use malicious URLs. TAP detects and blocks known and unknown threats, giving the team confidence with a broad view of the email threat landscape and human-assisted threat intelligence from Proofpoint. To complete its email defenses and protect sensitive data, the university deployed Proofpoint Email DLP and Email Encryption. Email DLP automatically enforces email communication policies from a central location, so neither users nor the IT team have to worry about sensitive information accidentally leaking. Email Encryption automatically secures outbound email messages and attachments based on configured policies without interfering with the way users work.
The Results
CONSISTENT DATA PROTECTION AND BETTER REPORTING
Before Proofpoint, the university’s two medical clinics and financial aid teams used a third-party DLP and encryption solution that ran in their Outlook. Now, if email senders know that a message includes data that needs encrypting, they simply type “encrypt” in the subject line, and Proofpoint automatically encrypts it. If a message contains sensitive data and hasn’t been encrypted, Proofpoint notifies Smith to review and approve it before it’s sent. “We feel much more secure knowing that information isn’t accidentally leaked or compromised,” said Smith. “We also have better control and insight because Proofpoint reports which emails were encrypted and what was sent.”
