SUNNYVALE, Calif., November 28, 2023 – Proofpoint, Inc., a leading cybersecurity and compliance company, today announced that Sumit Dhawan has been appointed chief executive officer, effective immediately. Rémi Thomas, Proofpoint’s chief financial officer, who has been acting as Proofpoint’s interim CEO since October 25^th, will continue to serve as the company’s CFO.

“The Proofpoint board of directors could not be more excited to partner with Sumit as he joins Proofpoint to usher in a new stage of growth,” said Seth Boro, managing partner at Thoma Bravo. “Sumit brings a wealth of valuable experience and expertise in building category-leading, scaled companies and businesses. We are confident his customer-centric passion and strong legacy of leadership will continue to carry Proofpoint’s mission forward in providing people-centric cybersecurity solutions that address some of the most challenging risks facing organizations today.”

Dhawan is a highly respected and seasoned technology leader with a proven track record of building market-leading security, cloud, and end-user computing businesses. In his most recent role as president of VMware, Dhawan was responsible for driving over $13B of revenue and led the company’s go-to-market functions including worldwide sales, customer success and experience, strategic ecosystem, industry solutions, marketing, and communications. Before that, he was chief executive officer of Instart, a cybersecurity business delivering innovations in web application security services. He has held senior executive and general management roles at both VMware and Citrix and has successfully established category-leading businesses at scale. 

“Over the years, Proofpoint has built an exceptional brand and is trusted by some of the world’s leading organizations as their cybersecurity partner of choice,” said Sumit Dhawan. “I’m honored to join a leader at the forefront of cybersecurity innovation and to shepherd its continuing and unwavering commitment to helping organizations across the globe protect people and defend data.”

Proofpoint recently announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Tessian, a leader in the use of advanced AI to automatically detect and guard against both accidental data loss and evolving email threats. Tessian’s cloud-native, API-enabled inbound and outbound email protection solution will extend Proofpoint’s award-winning offering to address the most frequent forms of data loss, including misdirected email and data exfiltration.

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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 85 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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