Westcon-Comstor signs EMEA distribution agreement with Proofpoint

Westcon-Comstor 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.”