Case Study: SEC University achieves improved email security and fewer false positives with Proofpoint

SEC University Fosters a More Collaborative, Secure Campus With Proofpoint

SEC University, a large multi‑campus institution with more than 70,000 students and 10,000 faculty and staff, faced growing email security challenges as users operated across Microsoft Exchange, Google Workspace and a migrating Microsoft 365 environment with hundreds of vanity domains. Legacy gateways struggled to keep up with increasingly sophisticated phishing and malware campaigns, and the university needed to secure open collaboration while reducing false positives that could disrupt critical academic communications.

The university implemented Proofpoint’s suite—Advanced Threat Protection, Data Protection (including encryption and DLP) and Security Awareness Training—which brought centralized, flexible protection across its complex mail ecosystem. Over a 90‑day period Proofpoint scanned 345 million inbound messages and blocked large portions of threats (53% by reputation, 9% by content; 12% of targeted threats by malicious attachments and 67% by URLs), while false positives dropped to about 5–10 per day out of roughly 6 million internal deliveries. The result was stronger, highly available email security, faster administrative response to change, and uninterrupted campus communication.

SEC University