Proofpoint sends channel a reminder to focus on email security

Too many customers appear to be taking email security lightly, failing to invest in protecting what can be a route into the corporate network for hackers.

With the majority of threats still taking advantage of the tendency by workers to click through to links and open attachments that they should avoid, not even 10% of most security budgets is going towards protecting email.

Resellers heading to InfoSec next week are going to be bombarded with new and emerging solutions that they can take to customers but Proofpoint will be among those reminding them that email continues to be an issue.

Keith Bird, vice president, UK, Ireland & South Africa at Proofpoint, said that it was important to look at security from a people centric point of view.

"Something like 93% of attacks and vulnerabilities happen through the people. However customers today only spend something like 8% of their security budget on email security. Of that 93% of vulnerabilities that happen through people about 96% of that comes through email," he said.

"What the attackers are attacking more than ever is not so much the infrastructure or the technology but the people. The biggest way they are doing that is to get people to click on links that perhaps they shouldn’t click on, opening attachments they shouldn't open. We need to focus on the people that are being attacked," he added.

Bird said that advanced email protection was an area that customers needed protection along with cloud and social, where individual personas or their domains were being hijacked.

The firm acquired an education and training company Wombat Security last year and Bird said that informing customers about issues was important because it reduced risk before technology stepped in.

Proofpoint is looking to work more closely with its top managed partners in the UK and is leaning on Exclusive Networks to develop the rest of its channel base. To support that ambition the firm is in the process of doubling its current in-house team to support the 20 partners that are managed directly.

“We are very focused that with our business this year and next year we want to work with no more than 30 partners here in the UK on a managed basis. Benefits of that are joint business plans, marketing support, business development funds and rebates,” he said.