Case Study: Historic University dramatically reduces account compromises and blocks hundreds of thousands of ransomware attempts with Proofpoint

Historic University Takes Proactive Approach to Cybersecurity

A historic university with more than 16,000 students and 4,000 faculty faced mounting email threats—spam, phishing that led to roughly 200 compromised accounts per month, and surges of ransomware—while migrating to Office 365 and needing better email reputation and situational awareness. The CISO determined the school required an enterprise-class email gateway to protect its mission and reclaim time spent on reactive remediation.

The university deployed Proofpoint Email Protection and Proofpoint Targeted Attack Protection (TAP) in front of Office 365 and integrated it with Palo Alto Networks WildFire. The change dramatically cut spam, fixed outbound reputation issues, and reduced compromised accounts from about 200 per month to fewer than 12; Proofpoint now blocks an estimated 300,000–500,000 ransomware messages per week, greatly improved phishing visibility and reporting, and freed the security team to focus on proactive initiatives.