Proofpoint Essentials Adds Social Media Protection, Email Attachment Defense and Automated Email Encryption

SUNNYVALE, Calif., Oct. 6, 2015 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Proofpoint, Inc., (NASDAQ:PFPT), a leading next-generation cybersecurity company, today announced the latest version of Proofpoint Essentials™ to protect how small and medium enterprises work today. Today's release features policy-based email encryption, protection against threats on corporate social media accounts and defense against attachment-based advanced threats.

According to Proofpoint research, on average, a 150-employee company suffers a targeted attack once a month. The FBI's Criminal Investigative Division also recently indicated that cybercriminals use publicly available information and vulnerabilities in email systems to trick small businesses into wiring large sums of money into fraudulent bank accounts. From October 2013 through June 2015, companies around the world lost more than $1 billion as a result of such schemes, and this is just one of several types of highly successful cyberattacks using email as the entry point.

"Proofpoint Essentials has completely transformed our cybersecurity posture, and we are confident we are doing everything possible to protect our employees, systems and customers from the array of increasingly malicious attacks," said Charles Hoots, Impac Services. "The solution was simple to deploy and has been very easy to maintain using our existing resources, minimizing the impact on our budget. Proofpoint Essentials gives us peace of mind."

With cloud-based Proofpoint Essentials, all cyberattack protection capabilities are accessible through a single, easy-to-use interface. Three new capabilities released today include:

• Social media account protection via continuous, real-time monitoring of corporate social media accounts with automated removal of unwanted posts (based on Proofpoint Nexgate's award-winning service).
• Attachment defense to identify malicious content within email attachments using next-generation analysis and to prevent users from falling prey to attacks.
• Automated email encryption of communications that contain sensitive data, enforcing data security policies and preventing inadvertent data loss.

"Attacks against SMEs are just as common as those against large enterprises, but the consequences for smaller organizations can be more devastating," said Andres Kohn, general manager of Proofpoint Essentials. "By stopping social media threats and malicious attachments, as well as spam and malicious email links, Proofpoint Essentials protects SMEs and the information they create from cyberattacks, data loss and compliance violations."

Proofpoint Essentials is an easy-to-deploy and manage, cloud-based next generation security solution that helps small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to extend their security policy from email into social media properties. This extension protects employees and social followers from malware, spam, phishing attacks, and malicious links and attachments. Designed for organizations with fewer than 1,000 users, Proofpoint Essentials enables SMEs to benefit from the same Proofpoint enterprise-class security technology that protects more than half of the Fortune 100. It reduces the cost and complexity typically associated with deploying, configuring and maintaining cybersecurity solutions.

Proofpoint Essentials is available in three packages – Business, Advanced, and Professional – to enable organizations to meet their specific security and budget requirements. For more information about Proofpoint Essentials, please visit www.proofpoint.com/essentials.

About Proofpoint, Inc.

Proofpoint Inc. (NASDAQ:PFPT) is a leading next-generation security and compliance company that provides cloud-based solutions for comprehensive threat protection, incident response, secure communications, social media security, compliance, archiving and governance. Organizations around the world depend on Proofpoint's expertise, patented technologies and on-demand delivery system. Proofpoint protects against phishing, malware and spam, while safeguarding privacy, encrypting sensitive information, and archiving and governing messages and critical enterprise information. More information is available at www.proofpoint.com.

Proofpoint is a registered trademark of Proofpoint, Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries. All other trademarks contained herein are the property of their respective owners.

CONTACT: MEDIA CONTACT: Patricia Hogan Proofpoint, Inc. 408-763-3863 phogan@proofpoint.com

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