SIM enhances email security with Proofpoint
ConvergenceAsia staff
23/08/2008

SIM Global Education has deployed the Proofpoint Messaging Security Gateway to protect 18,000 student mailboxes from incoming viruses and spam and prevent leaks of confidential information in outbound emails.

SIM Global Education, one of four core businesses under the SIM Group, which includes SIM University (UniSIM), SIM Professional Development and SIM Membership Services, offers high quality academic programmes in partnership with established international universities and institutions from the US, UK and Australia and Switzerland.

With an enrolment size of over 16,000 students which includes a growing pool of international students from 40 countries all over the world, SIM Global Education had the difficult challenge of safely and securely creating a student email network that would likely be accessed through multiple endpoints, be it a home desktop or laptop.

Compromised access devices, infected with malicious software could potentially generate and disseminate a large volume of spam within SIM Group’s network. To overcome this challenge and effectively deliver an email service that users can be confident of, the IT team looked towards adopting a comprehensive email security solution.

“To build our credibility as a world-class educational institution, it is extremely important for us to deliver a secure email service to facilitate and enhance our students’ learning experience here. Therefore, it was paramount that we adopt a solution that offers powerful anti-virus, anti-spam, encryption and data loss prevention capabilities,” said Ang Lek Han, Chief Technology Officer, SIM.

“Boasting enterprise-grade performance in stopping inbound threats such as viruses and spam, as well as encrypting and detecting sensitive information in outbound emails, the Proofpoint Messaging Security Gateway was the ideal solution to our problem,” he said.

Proofpoint provides unified email security, data loss prevention and email archiving solutions that help enterprises, universities, government organisations and ISPs defend against spam and viruses, prevent leaks of confidential and private information, encrypt sensitive emails and comply with regulations that affect email use.

SIM Global Education implemented Proofpoint Virus Protection and Proofpoint Spam Detection modules to protect its mailboxes against all malicious software and spam. After deployment, the university saw a sharp drop in both the level of spam that reached end-users’ mailboxes and the number of false-positives.

“With increasing emphasis on corporate governance, demonstrating a healthy ROI on all investments made is a key criteria for us as a privately-funded educational institution. Proofpoint’s solutions have demonstrated their value in effectively safeguarding our digital assets in a cost-effective way. The results speak for themselves,” Ang added.

“We expect increasing interest in many of our programmes and Proofpoint’s scalable solutions will allow us to easily extend our network securely as we begin to steadily grow our student population.”

Both Proofpoint Virus Protection and Proofpoint Spam Detection modules are fully integrated into Proofpoint’s message processing platform, allowing the IT team at SIM to control and manage the system via a centralised Web-based interface easily.

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