LONDON, UK – 13^th September –Westcon-Comstor, global technology provider and specialist distributor, today announced it has signed a new distribution agreement with Proofpoint. The collaboration will extend the reach of Proofpoint's industry-leading, people-centric cybersecurity and compliance solutions in the EMEA market. The initial focus will concentrate on certain high-growth countries and is set to expand, with a phased approach, to additional regions that would benefit from Westcon's cybersecurity capabilities.

Long-term hybrid work coupled with continuous employee turnover is creating risks for business leaders. In turn, managing and protecting data is a growing challenge for security teams. Meanwhile, the move to a distributed workforce has increased the attack surface, prompting a rise in phishing emails, and malicious bot and DDoS attacks against email and cloud servers, as threat actors target and exploit employees. Proofpoint's 2022 Voice of the CISO report, revealed that more than half (56%) of global CISOs consider human error to be their biggest cyber vulnerability, with compromised insider attacks as the most likely vector. As organisations continue to integrate new cloud technologies and platforms to support hybrid working, security strategies must shift to defending its users wherever and however they work.

The additions of Proofpoint's email security, cloud security and employee awareness training solutions reinforce Westcon NGS' Zero Trust and Cloud Security pillars, and will allow Westcon-Comstor to provide industry-leading, expert security solutions to the EMEA channel, protecting organisations and their people against advanced email threats and related compliance risks.

"With the email security market expected to reach approximately USD 11.3 billion by 2030 (market research future), Proofpoint, as a recognised market leader, is a crucial addition to our Westcon NGS vendor portfolio," said Daniel Hurel, Vice President, Westcon Cyber Security & Next Gen Solutions, EMEA. "As a technology alliance partner of Palo Alto Networks, CrowdStrike and Zscaler, Proofpoint is perfectly placed to become a key player in our Zero Trust and Cloud Security strategy. The alliance will allow Westcon resellers to offer customers a unique solution that spans network, endpoint security, cloud, email, and social media attack vectors via an integrated, multi-layered protection with shared threat intelligence, ultimately reducing the attack surface."

"Email remains the number one threat vector and cybercriminals consistently use social engineering attacks to target organisation's employees and trick them into falling victim to attacks," said Neill Burton Vice President of Channels and Alliances, EMEA at Proofpoint. "Proofpoint is one of the first companies to integrate a people-centric view into its security platform to easily identify vulnerable users and create a tailored security approach to best protect each individual employee, across multiple cloud platforms. This collaboration with Westcon delivers first-class cybersecurity protection that meets the needs of all organisations facing today's fast-evolving threat landscape and further enforces Proofpoint's commitment to its channel business in EMEA."

Proofpoint recognises the importance of human-centricity in security solutions, and its Email Security and Advanced Threat Protection Platform, Security Awareness Training and Cloud Security offerings, deliver insights, along with the right technology and training to make employees the first and most effective line of defence. The platform leverages over 26 different layers of detection to uncover sophisticated email fraud attacks, preventing attempted attacks before reaching an employee's inbox. Its solutions also integrate actionable insights into every step, so organisations can better understand the risk and respond to threats faster.

Proofpoint's Security Awareness Training also ensures that organisations have personalised learning tools in place to allow employees to spot and report threats, before interacting with malicious content. This people-centric approach is crucial to protecting an organisation's people, data and brand against advanced threats and compliance risks, today and in the future. 

Proofpoint was most recently recognised by Gartner®, as a Leader in its Magic Quadrant™ for Enterprise Information Archiving for the 10th consecutive year, making it the current, longest-running Leader in this Magic Quadrant.[1]

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1. Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Information Archiving, Michael Hoeck, Jeff Vogel, Chandra Mukhyala ,24th January 2022

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About Westcon-Comstor

Westcon-Comstor is a global technology provider and specialist distributor, operating in more than 70 countries. It delivers business value and opportunity by connecting the world's leading IT vendors with a channel of technology resellers, systems integrators and service providers. It combines industry insight, technical know-how and more than 30 years of distribution experience to deliver value and accelerate vendor and partner business success. It goes to market through two lines of business: Westcon and Comstor.

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About Proofpoint, Inc.

Proofpoint, Inc. is a leading cybersecurity and compliance company that protects organizations' greatest assets and biggest risks: their people. With an integrated suite of cloud-based solutions, Proofpoint helps companies around the world stop targeted threats, safeguard their data, and make their users more resilient against cyber attacks. Leading organizations of all sizes, including 75 percent of the Fortune 100, rely on Proofpoint for people-centric security and compliance solutions that mitigate their most critical risks across email, the cloud, social media, and the web. More information is available at www.proofpoint.com.

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