Recently, I read the Gartner® research report, Demystifying Microsoft’s Data Security Capabilities and Licensing. Many of the report’s findings aligned with what dozens of customers have shared with me over the past several years.
I have seen many organisations turn to Proofpoint Information Protection solutions after encountering challenges with other vendors’ offerings. Today, more than half of Fortune 100 companies trust Proofpoint to power their data loss prevention (DLP) programmes.
This isn’t by chance. When comparing Proofpoint DLP with other solutions, our offering stands out as the clear choice. In this blog post, I’ll highlight the key reasons why I believe Proofpoint excels.
Realising customer value
In my opinion, a key indicator of the value that Proofpoint brings is shown in the 2024 Gartner® Peer Insights™ Voice of the Customer for Data Loss Prevention. Proofpoint was the only vendor recognised with a Customers’ Choice distinction. This recognises vendors who meet or exceed market averages for Overall Experience and User Interest and Adoption.
One of the reasons I believe why Proofpoint was recognised with this distinction is the way that we’ve streamlined management and lowered costs. This can be seen when comparing our solution to Microsoft Purview. Because Proofpoint Managed Services runs Purview for some of our customers, our team was able to analyse how much time and effort it takes to operate and maintain it. According to Proofpoint analysis, organisations using Microsoft Purview experience:
- A 33% detection rate of data loss incidents
- 50% more alerts to manage
- 2.5 times longer time to triage incidents
These inefficiencies directly translate into higher operational costs because organisations often must hire more staff to deal with increased alerts and the number of incidents to triage.
In contrast, Proofpoint uses a human-centric approach that provides deep insight into user intent, data, and application access patterns. It provides capabilities that detect all manner of data loss incidents because its rules are both content- and context-based. This allows for protecting data and alerting on behaviours that are not possible with traditional, content-centric systems and assures far lower risks of false negatives and false positives.
For instance, Proofpoint will issue an alert if a user downloads a file from a sensitive data repository, encrypts it and transfers the file to a USB. In contrast, systems that employ a traditional approach rely on reading the content of data. This isn’t reliable because of a variety of reasons, such as poorly written rules or encrypted data in transit.
Our intuitive interface and single, unified dashboard speed up investigations. This not only lowers management costs, but it also means that your data is better protected.
Proofpoint is not just technically superior. It also has significant cost advantages. Our team’s analysis also compared the costs of operating and maintaining our DLP solution to Purview’s. Organisations that make the switch to Proofpoint can expect:
- A 50% reduction in total cost of ownership
- An average payback period of just 4.5 months based on breach avoidance and workforce efficiency
If you combine our detection capabilities and streamlined management with our cost benefits, then the value of our comprehensive solution becomes clear.
Proofpoint reduces risk
Proofpoint Information Protection takes a human-centric approach to security. We integrate user behaviour and content telemetry across all DLP channels, including email, cloud apps, endpoints, and the web. This context-rich data provides security analysts with what they need to quickly and accurately assess incidents – and prevent data loss before it happens.
Generative AI (GenAI) is a good example of why this is so important. You can’t enforce acceptable use policies for GenAI tools if you don’t understand your content and how employees are interacting with it. If you want your employees to use these tools without putting your data security at risk, then you need to take a human-centric approach.
Proofpoint DLP enables you to apply rules that control a user’s ability to paste or upload sensitive content into tools like ChatGPT and Google Gemini. Proofpoint parses content that is typed into a chatbot in real time and then matches it with sensitive data detectors and classifiers. As a result, when a user pastes sensitive data into a GenAI tool, they may get several outcomes. They might be asked to justify their action, get a warning about acceptable corporate use policies, or be prevented from submitting the prompt altogether.
When you’re applying rules for GenAI tools – or doing any other administrative task – Proofpoint also makes it easy. Our unified console consolidates policy management, workflows, alert management, classification, and reporting, which increases your efficiency. This is in stark contrast to Microsoft Purview. It can require up to 15 different dashboards to manage a single DLP event. Plus, it requires a separate SIEM tool for reporting. All this complexity increases the risk of a data loss incident.
Complexity leads to missed incidents
When a data loss event happens, it can expose your organisation to multiple risks. This includes brand damage and catastrophic financial losses.
With Microsoft Purview, the administrative burden is significant, which means a data loss event is more likely. Policy management involves manual processes where you must define exceptions and navigate the product’s other limitations. This leads to a costly, inefficient, and error-prone system that slows down DLP operations.
Proofpoint offers quick time to value
Microsoft Purview may seem simpler to implement. However, many customers face lengthy and challenging deployments. One large technology company spent six months trying to implement Purview before switching to Proofpoint. Once they did, they saw immediate progress with their insider threat management (ITM) and DLP programmes.
This immediate time to value is even more clear when comparing Microsoft Information Risk Management (IRM) with Proofpoint Insider Threat Management (ITM). Proofpoint ITM is fully integrated with our Endpoint DLP offering. As one Microsoft E5 customer said, “You’ve catapulted our DLP and ITM programme into maturity within the span of a year, something that we failed to do with Microsoft.”
Proofpoint drives operational success
Proofpoint doesn’t just provide technology. We also deliver the people, processes, and expertise that you need to create and manage a successful DLP programme.
Our proprietary end-to-end information protection framework brings unmatched industry expertise as well as a proven methodology to design, implement, and mature your DLP programme. Proofpoint and our certified partners use our framework to help customers identify critical maturity gaps, evaluate their benchmarking against industry peers, and develop effective DLP strategies. If your organisation is facing a skills shortage, you can rely on our highly skilled experts to co-manage your DLP programme with Proofpoint Managed Information Protection.
Begin realising ROI on Day One
Proofpoint offers adaptive, human-centric security that transforms information protection across all critical channels – email, cloud, endpoints, and the web. Our approach ensures that you can save valuable time and resources. Proofpoint Information Protection is built on a cloud-native platform, which means it deploys quickly and is easy to maintain. All of this means that you can achieve a better ROI from Day One and throughout your DLP journey.
To see if Proofpoint Information Protection is right for you, visit our website to learn about our capabilities.
Gartner, Demystifying Microsoft’s Data Security Capabilities and Licensing, Andrew Bales, Max Goss, 3 September 2024
Gartner, Voice of the Customer for Data Loss Prevention, Peer Contributors, 23 February 2024
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