Proofpoint to Microsoft 365 Migration for Healthcare Company

Background

A leading US healthcare company recently migrated from Exchange on-premises to Microsoft 365.

Historically, they relied on Proofpoint for email anti-virus/anti-spam etc. and compliance journalling. However, they aimed to leverage the full functionality of Microsoft 365 and reduce their expenditure on third-party solutions.

Their main objective was to replicate the functionalities provided by Proofpoint using Microsoft 365’s native features. This involved the following steps:

• Configuring Microsoft Defender to match and surpass the email security and hygiene services they had with Proofpoint.
• Using Exchange Online combined with retention policies to replicate the role of an email journal.
• Migrating the email journals they’d captured to date from Proofpoint into Microsoft 365 in a way that they could be:
  • available for eDiscovery,
  • not accessible by users, and
  • retained in accordance with their compliance remit.

All this had to be in place before they switched across from Proofpoint to Microsoft 365.

The Solution

Professional Services & a Leading Data Migration Tool

The healthcare company chose email migration experts Essential Computing to drive their migration.

During initial discussions, we discovered we had shared connections from the early days of email archiving (we go back a long way*), which reassured the client that we were the right partner for their journey.

Essential was also able to demonstrate how Microsoft 365 could replace the role of a journal (given that Microsoft 365 doesn’t offer a conventional journal).

A Managed Migration

The first step was to extract the data from Proofpoint.

Multiple exports were run simultaneously to ensure efficient data transfer. This data was then scanned to gather the crucial individual SMTP addresses and metadata needed to create an audit trail that ensured nothing was missed out.

Subsequently, all emails belonging to ‘current’ employees were migrated into the relevant user’s Archive mailbox in Exchange Online.

Specifically the emails were placed into the recoverable items folder (RIF) so they would not be visible to end users, but could be retained according to policies and be available for eDiscovery searches.

For departed users (leavers), new primary mailboxes were created, licensed, and subjected to retention policies to ensure compliance. Once the data was migrated, these mailboxes were managed according to the normal policy for departed users.

Tangible Migration Benefits

Within a few months, all data was exported from Proofpoint and imported into Exchange Online, and the customer ran several discovery tests to ensure everything was as expected. 

The migration delivered the following benefits:

eDiscovery in one place: With Microsoft Purview it was now possible to conduct eDiscovery searches across Exchange Online, OneDrive for Business, SharePoint Online, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft 365 Groups, and Viva Engage teams – all in one place. This is something they could never do with Proofpoint.

Due diligence: By partnering with Essential Computing, the healthcare company was able to successfully streamline their migration. They could also rest assured they had an audit that demonstrated chain-of-custody as they moved their email records.

Bottom-line savings: Monthly bills for Proofpoint were growing all the time. The journal migration combined with the right settings in Microsoft meant they could cut the additional costs for Proofpoint and improve their Microsoft ROI.

Partnering with Essential