HIPAA News

Proofpoint Introduces Its Next-Generation Email Security and Data Loss Prevention Platform

(Oct 07, 2008)-- Proofpoint, provider of unified email security, archiving and data loss prevention solutions, introduced Proofpoint 5.5, the latest version of its integrated email and data security solution. Proofpoint 5.5's unified email security platform -- which can be deployed in on-demand (SaaS), on-premises, or hybrid configurations -- defends against inbound spam and viruses, prevents leaks of confidential and private data, encrypts sensitive email contents and helps companies optimize the performance and usability of their entire email infrastructure.

Significant enhancements in Proofpoint 5.5 help reduce a wide variety of email risks associated with inbound threats and outbound data loss while improving ease-of-use for administrators and end-users. In addition, Proofpoint 5.5 incorporates expanded international capabilities including a fully localized Japanese language version of Proofpoint's administrative interface, enhanced language detection features and data loss prevention capabilities for multi-byte languages.

Proofpoint 5.5 offers improved bounce management features that block 100 percent of "backscatter" spam. As spam volumes have grown, backscatter -- the barrage of non-delivery report messages (NDRs) and auto-responses caused by spammers spoofing an organization's email addresses -- has become an increasingly serious problem for most organizations.

To combat this threat, Proofpoint 5.5 incorporates support for the latest BATV (Bounce Address Tag Validation) specification. BATV tags outbound messages and then validates incoming NDRs and auto-responses against those tags to block backscatter caused by spam attacks.

Previous generations of the Proofpoint MLX(TM) anti-spam engine have blocked 80% or more of all backscatter using patent-pending machine learning techniques. The new bounce management features allow organizations to block the remaining 20 percent of backscatter and improve overall spam detection accuracy beyond the industry-leading 99.8%+ spam detection rate delivered by MLX alone.

"Proofpoint's email security and data loss prevention features protect our employees from spam and viruses with amazing accuracy while also protecting the confidentiality of our patients' data and ensuring that we comply with HIPAA regulations," said Renee Olson, IT manager for Turville Bay MRI & Radiation Oncology Center. "We are especially pleased with the new bounce management features for enhanced spam protection and the new DLP incident tracking features that enable us to more easily track HIPAA-related data loss prevention incidents. In addition, the integrated Proofpoint Smart Search capabilities will help us keep our costs low by making it easier to trace messages and provide faster answers to common email support issues."

The new version enhances Proofpoint's suitability for global deployments with an array of internationalization and non-English language features beyond the multi-lingual end-user interfaces and advanced, non-English spam detection capabilities of previous versions. These features are especially important as international requirements for data protection become increasingly complex.

A new localization framework allows Proofpoint 5.5 to support non-English languages and international (multi-byte) character sets in every part of the product including policy definitions, dictionaries and annotations.

With the introduction of Proofpoint 5.5, Proofpoint's entire administrative GUI, product documentation and online help have been fully translated into the Japanese language, providing many benefits for Proofpoint's Japan-based and multinational customers. As with Proofpoint's end-user interfaces, each administrator's language preferences can be set on an individual basis. Additional international language administrative interfaces including French, German and Spanish will be made available with future product releases.

Email end-users can select their own preferred language for interfaces including message digests and web-based quarantines. End users can select from Chinese, Dutch, English, German, Finnish, French, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Swedish versions.

In addition to the international data loss prevention features described previously, Proofpoint 5.5 also includes enhanced DLP workflow features for improved incident status tracking. Administrators, compliance officers or other appropriate business users can review, comment upon and track outbound policy violations. The new features automate many of the processes associated with remediating data loss prevention policy violations, saving organizations time and money in the process.

For more information, please visit http://www.proofpoint.com.

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