Proofpoint e-mail protection is an e-mail security system that helps protect against spam and malicious e-mails that could steal information or infect your computer. The system examines e-mail messages and filters content that meets certain criteria for spam, junk, fraud, phishing attempts, malicious links or infected file attachments. If an e-mail is determined to be spam or malicious in nature, Proofpoint will place these messages in a quarantine, preventing them from being delivered to your e-mail inbox. Individuals can review their quarantine in a daily digest summary or by accessing the Proofpoint e-mail protection system where messages can be released by the individual if found to be legitimate. Messages in quarantine are stored for 30 days. After 30 days, quarantined messages are deleted.
Proofpoint is designed to run on top of Google's Gmail anti-spam features, significantly enhancing protective measures against unwanted e-mail. Because of this relationship, messages released or 'safelisted' in Proofpoint could potentially encounter Google's anti-spam filters and still end up in an individual's Gmail spam folder.
Proofpoint E-mail Filtering Process
E-mails delivered to Colby account holders from external addresses (gmail.com, outlook.com, aol.com, etc.) will be filtered through Proofpoint's e-mail protection service. E-mails received between Colby accounts will not be filtered. E-mails to Google groups (group addresses, i.e. support@colby.edu) will not be filtered, but can be if requested by a group owner/manager. If you require a Google group to be moderated by Proofpoint, please contact the ITS support center.
Proofpoint Daily Digest
Proofpoint provides a daily digest e-mail showing the messages that it has quarantined over the previous 24-hour period. The digest will provide the ability to safely view quarantined messages by sender and subject, and permit the recipient to release e-mails to their inbox that they believe are legitimate. An example of a daily digest e-mail is shown below.
Viewing a message
Clicking on the subject line of the message will take you to your Proofpoint dashboard where you may safely view its contents.
Releasing a message
Clicking on Release will deliver the e-mail to your inbox. Please note: E-mail released in this manner may end up in your Gmail 'spam' folder. Please be sure to check your spam folder after releasing messages.
Safelisting a sender
Clicking on Safelist will deliver the e-mail to your inbox and place the e-mail sender on a safelist so that future e-mails from that sender are always delivered to your inbox.
Other options
Request New Summary Digest sends you an updated Summary Digest showing all of your quarantined e-mail plus any e-mail filtered since the last digest was sent.
Request Safe/Blocked Senders List sends a summary of all of your Safe and Blocked Senders.
Manage My Proofpoint Account accesses your Proofpoint dashboard. You may view quarantined messages, access your safe/blocked senders list, and carry out other management functions.
Help opens up this article.
Proofpoint Dashboard
In addition to the daily digest e-mail, the Proofpoint platform also provides an online dashboard that can be accessed by each account holder. The dashboard can be accessed in three different ways:
- Visiting okta.colby.edu and then clicking on the Proofpoint Protection Server app (as shown in the icon below)
- clicking on Manage My Proofpoint Account link provided in the daily e-mail digest.
An example of the Proofpoint e-mail protection dashboard is shown below:
Proofpoint URL Defense
Proofpoint scans URLs contained in e-mails in order to determine if they are malicious or misleading. This is done to help you determine quickly that a particular URL has been scanned by Proofpoint and is safe to click on. Proofpoint also rescans a URL when it is clicked on from your e-mail in case the status of a URL changes after the initial scan.
In the above example, URL Defense has scanned for malicious links and rewritten the URLs to make them visible to recipients. These links are now safe to click.
Here’s what URL Defense does with each e-mail:
- Proofpoint e-mail protection reviews the message and if a link is detected as being misleading or potentially malicious
- The linked URL is displayed as text
- The URL is rewritten, introducing the text https://urldefense.com/ to the link, and the e-mail is delivered to the recipient's inbox