Proofpoint talks top trends partners should take note of and 2022 highlights
Proofpoint’s EMEA channel boss Neill Burton underscores the company’s commitment to its channel business and investment
- What have been your highlights of 2022 so far?
Proofpoint has continued to innovate at a fast pace throughout the year and invests heavily in future technology.
Over the last year, we have made strategic acquisitions to add new solutions to our portfolio. Earlier this year we acquired Dathena, an innovator in artificial intelligence-powered data protection, further strengthening our cloud-based people-centric security solutions by adding AI-based data classification to our Information & Cloud Security platform.
Proofpoint continues to invest in not only its technology and partnerships, but also its people. We have grown our UK channel team in 2022, with the appointment of new EMEA and UK leads. Proofpoint is committed to growing its channel program across EMEA in 2023 and beyond.
- What's the most interesting industry trend you've noticed this year?
The global shift to the "work from anywhere" model has increased organisations' reliance on collaboration platforms and cloud technologies to maintain business continuity while employees are working from anywhere. In addition, organisations are creating and moving more data than ever.
This in turn creates new forms of security risk for organisations, making it challenging to both understand when data is at risk and implement the proper control to mitigate that risk.
With the evaporation of the traditional network perimeter, the old way of protecting data doesn't work; we need to up our game and adapt data loss prevention (DLP) and insider risk solutions to protect the modern edge - endpoint, cloud apps, email, and the web.
Technology is just one aspect of modern data protection.
You also need the right people and processes in place. But finding security experts to build an enterprise-wide program and operate disparate technologies is both challenging and expensive.
We have worked with our partners throughout 2022 to understand the new data challenges they face and also offer Managed Services for our Information Protection solutions, giving partners comprehensive program and best practices to quickly address their data security and compliance challenges.
- How has your partner strategy evolved in 2022?
The traditional partner program of just regular resale doesn't work. Partners cannot simply be given a "one-size-fits-all" approach. The challenges faced by our partners' customers are unique, so our programs have developed throughout 2022 to let organisations consume our technology in the way they want.
With Proofpoint, partners now have the ability to choose what security specialisations they want to be known for.
For example, we currently have partner specialisations for our Email Security, Security Awareness Training and Information Protection solutions. Across EMEA we have many partners specialised in Proofpoint Security Awareness Training (PSAT), and additional partners are in the process of becoming Proofpoint Information Protection Specialists.
We are also offering partners new, free tools, such as Security Awareness and Training Surveys, so they can work with their clients to help them understand who within their organisation may potentially cause data risks.
One of the most valuable assets from being a Proofpoint partner is the intelligence we create for their customers. Our unrivalled view of the threat landscape in 2022 and beyond has helped partners monetise, by taking the intelligence and wrapping services around them.
- What are you most looking forward to about 2023 / What do you want the channel to know about for your business in 2023?
Our partners are critical to our success, globally and locally and will continue to be as we look ahead. Proofpoint is a channel-first organisation. In fact, 100 per cent of net new business across EMEA is indirect through our community of certified resellers, systems integrators and service providers.
Our breadth of solutions is constantly expanding - and will continue to innovate - to match the needs of our partners' customers to help them address today's threat landscape in 2023 and beyond. In fact, more than 20 per cent of our revenue is reinvested back into R&D—one of the highest rates in the industry.
We will also continue to offer our partners further opportunities to choose what they want to be famous for, with our specialisation offering across our solutions.
In 2023, we will continue to listen to our partners wants and needs and address these within our partner programme to meet the ever-evolving requirements of our partner community. Stay tuned!
This is a sponsored post in collaboration with Proofpoint.