How can a company with locations in 17 countries start anew with an email system following a major merger? This case study examines the challenges, lessons, and tools required to overcome a technology integration challenge of this magnitude.
The Challenge
Following a major acquisition, the IT team was tasked with consolidating email systems from two organizations with a combined 22,000 employees across 17 countries. The legacy systems were plagued by spam — accounting for over 60% of all email volume — and the consolidation represented an opportunity to start fresh with modern email security infrastructure.
The Solution
The team deployed a cloud-based email security gateway ahead of the new email infrastructure, providing immediate spam reduction while the migration was underway. Within 30 days of deployment, spam volume reaching users dropped from 60% to under 2%. Antivirus detection rates improved from catching approximately 85% of malicious attachments to over 99%.
Lessons Learned
- Cloud-based email security can be deployed rapidly — often in hours — and provides immediate relief
- Spam filtering must be tuned to your specific user population to minimize false positives
- User education remains critical even with strong technical controls — social engineering attacks that impersonate legitimate senders require human judgment