Entertainment Giant Village Roadshow Builds Trust With Customers and Suppliers With Proofpoint
The Challenge
- Protect entertainment ecosystem from email threats
- Improve efficiency to help IT staff do more with less
- Elevate awareness of security among staff
The Solution
- Proofpoint Email Protection
- Proofpoint Threat Response Auto-Pull
- Proofpoint Email Fraud Defense
- Proofpoint Security Awareness
The Results
- Ensures security for both incoming and outgoing messages, preventing the latest email threats
- Proofpoint Email Fraud Defense solves company’s top security concern
- Automation frees staff from cumbersome manual processes
- Customized training augments technology with best practices
The Challenge
Protecting Communications in an Entertainment Ecosystem
With headquarters in Melbourne, Australia and offices in Sydney and Gold Coast, Village Roadshow is made up of a colorful array of core businesses that are diverse, yet complementary. Always growing and evolving, the entertainment company is active in theme parks, cinema exhibition, film and DVD distribution, as well as marketing solutions. And to sustain all these operations, the organization relies on constant communications with customers and business partners.
Arul Arogyanathan, Chief Information Officer at Village Roadshow, highlighted, “With over five million emails coming in each quarter, the risk is substantial, particularly with business email compromise (BEC) emerging as a prominent initial threat vector. At the outset, we identified three primary business risks, with BEC being a standout concern. Recognizing the urgency to protect our staff from these threats, secure our suppliers, and build trust with our customers, we took proactive measures to strengthen our defenses.”
Although Village Roadshow had an existing email gateway system in place, it required a great deal of manual support. What’s more, it could not protect the organization from the latest generation of threats.
“Our current email gateway was overlooking nearly 1,500 suspicious emails daily, and with the escalating external risks, it became crucial to reduce that number to close to zero,” said Arogyanathan. “This was a key reason for us to look for a different solution.”
Village Roadshow needed a more effective email security solution. It had to be able to deliver improved accuracy, efficiency and visibility. And at the same time, it needed to work smoothly with its existing infrastructure and applications.
“Enhancing the precision in blocked emails and preventing advanced threats like malware, ransomware and phishing were vital considerations,” noted Arogyanathan. “We also sought a dashboard to gain insights into the solution’s performance, detailing what was blocked and what was allowed.”
Arul Arogyanathan, chief information officer, Village Roadshow
The Solution
Stopping Email Fraud With Technology and Best Practices
There were several solutions that Village Roadshow considered. It ultimately chose a comprehensive email security solution based on several integrated Proofpoint offerings.
At the heart of the deployment is Proofpoint Email Protection. This industry-leading secure email gateway empowers Village Roadshow to secure and control its inbound and outbound email. It provides multilayered detection that dynamically identifies and blocks business email compromise (BEC), phishing and other threats. And for added protection and efficiency, the company deployed Proofpoint Threat Response Auto-Pull (TRAP), which automatically quarantines malicious emails that bypass perimeter solutions. This helps administrators respond faster to threats.
“The TRAP feature lets us pull malicious emails from user inboxes after delivery,” said Gsen Chen, information security officer at Village Roadshow. “In the past, we would have had to write a script to remove them—without accidentally removing emails that did not pose a threat. Proofpoint has helped us streamline the process, which saves us time carrying out these activities.”
Village Roadshow strengthened its solution by adding Proofpoint Email Fraud Defense, which integrates smoothly with the other Proofpoint solutions. It enables the organization to simplify and enforce DMARC to mitigate imposter threats.
“We operate six external domains, dispatching 50,000 emails monthly as part of our campaign management program. Ensuring trustworthiness for the recipients is crucial,” explained Arogyanathan. “With a network of nearly 1,200 suppliers, establishing a trusted relationship becomes a priority. But how can we create a trusted relationship with them? This is where Proofpoint Email Fraud Defense plays a pivotal role.”
To sharpen its culture of security, Village Roadshow augments its technologies with Proofpoint Security Awareness. This is a tailored offering that is aligned to specific user roles and vulnerabilities.
The Results
A People-Centric Approach to Minimizing Risk
Village Roadshow needed to move under an aggressive deployment timeline. The Proofpoint Professional Services team played a key role in helping the company hit its deadline.
“We take email protection very seriously, so we wanted this to be done as soon as possible,” said Chen. “The Proofpoint Professional Services team has actively engaged with us on the implementation front, guiding us on the right thing to do. This was very important to us.”
Once deployed, the solution quickly delivered dividends. With Proofpoint Email Protection, the organization is more confident in its ability to stop the latest email threats. At the same time, it frees up more time for its IT and security staff.
“Proofpoint is saving us time and helping us provide a higher level of protection for our users,” said Chen. “Now we have features such as the phish alarm button, TRAP automation, and URL Defense to detect and analyze malicious URLs. And as a result, we’ve been able to reduce risk throughout our organization. This includes people accessing emails at home using personal devices or computers.”
The Village Roadshow IT team understands that technology is just one facet of a strong security strategy. With Proofpoint Security Awareness, the company can supplement its security tools with training that’s customized for every employee.
“In matters concerning issues like business email compromise, while technology is significant, the reality is that we receive around 5.4 million emails per quarter. It’s not feasible for AI to safeguard us from every single email,” explained Arogyanathan. “This is where Proofpoint Security Awareness becomes crucial. We quickly recognized that the ultimate layer of defense lies in human awareness. And it can be personalized to suit a diverse user base, ranging from frontline users to busy executives.”
“I think how we’ve implemented it, in a holistic way across everything that anybody does, is a key driver in making our training and awareness more personalized,” added Kylie Siljama, enterprise IT governance, risk and compliance lead at Village Roadshow. “We’re able to remind people that best practices are not only about protecting Village Roadshow, but about protecting their personal assets and loved ones as well. That’s the value-add that Proofpoint brought in.”
Proofpoint quarterly business review (QBR) presentations are also driving strong outcomes. And they help the technical teams better communicate the importance of security awareness and behavior to business stakeholders.
“Through our QBRs, the Proofpoint team effectively communicates external threats, their evolution, and the interconnectedness of various solutions,” stated Arogyanathan. “When we supplement these statistics with personalized examples, like a DocuSign email from someone posing as a CFO, threats become more relatable, and the significance becomes clear to our team.”
Village Roadshow and Proofpoint are working together to create a more confident, secure organization that brings together the best of people and advanced technology.