J.E. DUNN
J.e. Dunn Construction Eliminates Spam and Increases Productivity Using Proofpoint™
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
J.E. Dunn Construction received an
increasing volume of unsolicited and
often-offensive inbound emails, which
hampered employee productivity and
constrained IT resources. Disgruntled
employees reported spending one to two
hours per day deleting spam.
PROOFPOINT SOLUTION
The company implemented the Proofpoint
Protection Server. Within hours, J.E. Dunn
correctly identified 65% of inbound emails
as spam, and stopped them from clogging
end users' in-boxes.
RESULTS ACHIEVED
J.E. Dunn eliminated spam from reaching the in-boxes of its employees. In doing so, the company regained an average of one to two hours of productivity per day, per employee that had been lost to manually sorting through unsolicited spam. This also eliminated the need to purchase additional mail servers, something the company's IT team had been forced to consider in order to manage the large volume of email traffic.
PRODUCTS DEPLOYED
Proofpoint MLX technology is
saving us valuable time and
money because it actually learns
over time, adapting and evolving
to keep in-boxes spam-free even
as spammer tactics change.
Chris Wedeman
Systems Administrator
SPAM: A PROBLEM WITH A PRICE TAG Headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri, J.E. Dunn Construction is a member of the J.E.
Dunn Group, a national leader in commercial construction for more than 80 years. The
company relies on email as an important vehicle for business communication; however,
over the course of several months, members of J.E. Dunn's executive team began to
express frustration over their inundation with spam. Equally disconcerting were the
potential liability issues that could arise from offensive spam content reaching employees.
The company realized that in order to regain business productivity and protect employees, it quickly needed to implement an anti-spam solution. Because IT resources were limited, J.E. Dunn placed a high priority on finding a solution that would easily integrate with its existing architecture, required very little maintenance, and could scale and evolve with the business. The company needed a solution that would both stop spam and avoid the risk of blocking legitimate emails – called false positives – a problem inherent in many anti-spam solutions on the market.
CHOOSING THE RIGHT SYSTEM TO BLOCK SPAM
J.E. Dunn evaluated several leading anti-spam technologies before selecting the Proofpoint
Protection Server®, a comprehensive software solution that protects corporate
messaging infrastructures from spam, viruses, and policy violations.
According to Chris Wedeman, J.E. Dunn's systems administrator, there were two primary reasons that the company selected Proofpoint. The first reason was that, after testing all of the offerings, Proofpoint correctly identified and filtered 65% of J.E. Dunn's incoming email as spam – a number that astounded even J.E. Dunn's executives – with no false positives. The next closest offering identified only 45% to 50% of email as spam, indicating that it misidentified as much as 20% of the company's total email. The Proofpoint Protection Server was by far the most effective at detecting spam without compromising false positive rates. The second reason was Proofpoint's tremendous flexibility – it was easily configured to meet J.E. Dunn's specific business needs and effortlessly integrated with the company's existing IT architecture.
J.E. Dunn evaluated several leading anti-spam technologies before selecting the Proofpoint Protection Server, a comprehensive software solution that protects corporate messaging infrastructures from spam, viruses, and policy violations.
According to Chris Wedeman, J.E. Dunn's systems administrator, there were two primary reasons that the company selected Proofpoint. The first reason was that, after testing all of the offerings, Proofpoint correctly identified and filtered 65% of J.E. Dunn's incoming email as spam – a number that astounded even J.E. Dunn's executives – with no false positives. The next closest offering identified only 45% to 50% of email as spam, indicating that it misidentified as much as 20% of the company's total email. The Proofpoint Protection Server was by far the most effective at detecting spam without compromising false positive rates. The second reason was Proofpoint's tremendous flexibility – it was easily configured to meet J.E. Dunn's specific business needs and effortlessly integrated with the company's existing IT architecture.
REGAINING CONTROL OF THE IN-BOX
Proofpoint made an immediate impact at J.E. Dunn, correctly identifying and stopping
an astounding 65% of inbound email traffic as spam. Now, employees receive only
legitimate email. Moreover, employees are protected from exposure to offensive
materials, eliminating any possible liability for this exposure by the company. “End-user
feedback has been outstanding!” said Wedeman. “A survey of our employees found
savings of one to two hours each day for every employee, simply by eliminating their
need to sort through spam. The impact on our business productivity is remarkable.”
Proofpoint Protection Server's MLX™ Machine Learning technology classifies J.E. Dunn's email as spam or not spam based on the detection of more than 50,000 spam attributes, which is roughly 20 times greater than the number of attributes analyzed by most other offerings on the market.
This gives J.E. Dunn very high confidence that spam will be stopped and only legitimate emails will get to their recipients. “Proofpoint's MLX technology is saving us valuable time and money because it actually learns over time, adapting and evolving to keep in-boxes spam-free even as spammer tactics change,” added Wedeman. J.E. Dunn's IT organization has realized tremendous benefits from the Proofpoint Protection Server on several fronts.
- The reduction in email traffic has taken tremendous pressure off of J.E. Dunn's mail servers, eliminating the need to purchase additional servers – something the company had considered in order to support the previous volume of mail traffic.
- Proofpoint Protection Server's End User Digest feature allows end users to check and potentially release any quarantined emails at their convenience, instead of burdening IT with costly support calls.
- The Proofpoint Protection Server consolidates spam and content filtering functionality into one solution. This supports a two-year-long initiative at J.E. Dunn to centrally manage all systems and processes within the IT department.
“The Proofpoint Protection Server is a blessing for IT departments,” continued Wedeman. “Based on our evaluation of anti-spam solutions, Proofpoint's flexibility is leaps and bounds above the rest so it can fit any company's business requirements, and it could easily fit the architecture at virtually any organization. This is crucial because, as our business evolves, we have the comfort of knowing that our anti-spam solution can adapt to meet our changing environment.” Wedeman sums it up, simply stating, “Our spam problem is solved for good.”
ABOUT J.E. DUNN CONSTRUCTION
J.E. Dunn Construction, a member of the
J.E. Dunn Group of companies, is based in
Kansas City, Missouri and is a commercial
general contractor with expertise in construction
management, program management,
and design/build projects. The
company was founded in 1924 by John Ernest
Dunn Sr. and remains family owned.
The J.E. Dunn Group of companies has 14
offices nationwide, more than 2,500 employees,
and annual revenues exceeding
$1.65 billion.
