Proofpoint CEO On ‘Monumental’ Hornetsecurity Deal, MSP Growth In US

With the acquisition deal positioning Proofpoint for major growth with MSPs and SMBs in the U.S. market, ‘this is a big strategic leap forward for us,’ Proofpoint CEO Sumit Dhawan tells CRN.

Proofpoint’s planned acquisition of Hornetsecurity positions the company for massive growth with MSPs and SMBs in the U.S. market, representing a “big strategic leap forward” for the cybersecurity vendor beyond the enterprise, Proofpoint CEO Sumit Dhawan told CRN.

Hornetsecurity specializes in security for Microsoft 365 and has crossed $160 million in annual recurring revenue with growth up more than 20 percent year over year, according to Proofpoint. The price tag for the acquisition announced Thursday is more than $1 billion, according to a report from CNBC, and sources close to the deal confirmed that the deal is well over $1 billion.

[Related: Here’s What 15 Top Cybersecurity Execs Are Saying About AI: RSAC 2025]

Based in London and primarily focused on the European market, Hornetsecurity has been looking to accelerate its expansion within the U.S., even as enterprise-focused Proofpoint has been seeking to enter the SMB market by working with MSPs, Dhawan said.

“We made some attempts at doing it, and we realized that while we have the reach, while we have the reputation, while we have the brand, and we have all the threat intelligence and all the threat analytics—we don’t have two things. We don’t have the right consolidated, simple, multi-tenant experience, as Hornetsecurity has. And we don’t have a partner program [focused on MSPs],” he said in an interview Thursday with CRN. “We loved what Hornetsecurity did on that front.”

Upon closure of the deal—expected in the second half of the year—Proofpoint will be making significant investments in the U.S. “to scale the business, the aspirations and ambitions that Hornetsecurity already has,” Dhawan said.

Crucially, that will include investments aimed at “attracting the best partners in the U.S.,” he said.

Hornetsecurity founder and CEO Daniel Hofmann, who will continue to lead the unit within Proofpoint, told CRN that the company has prioritized operating in a “very friendly” manner with MSPs and other partners. Hornetsecurity currently works with more than 12,000 MSPs and other channel partners.

Hornetsecurity’s main offering is 365 Total Protection, which provides MSPs with a multitenant platform for delivery of “advanced” email security, backup and security awareness, as well as access and permission control and domain fraud protection, Proofpoint said in its news release.

Ultimately, the combination of the two vendors is “monumental” and targeted at creating “a singular company that stands for human-centric security across every customer in every size,” Dhawan said.

Proofpoint has been privately held since August 2021 when it was acquired by Thoma Bravo for $12.3 billion.

In Gartner’s first-ever Magic Quadrant for Email Security Platforms, released in December 2024, Hornetsecurity was ranked in the “niche players” quadrant. Proofpoint, meanwhile, was ranked among the six “leaders” in the report.

Proofpoint’s planned acquisition of Microsoft 365 specialist Hornetsecurity also follows the March announcement of an expanded strategic partnership between Proofpoint and Microsoft. The M&A deal should help the partnership between the companies to grow “even stronger and deeper,” Dhawan said Thursday.

What follows is more of CRN’s interview with Dhawan.

What’s the biggest goal of the acquisition for Proofpoint and Hornetsecurity?

We both believe that securing humans is a fundamental problem that doesn’t just exist in the enterprise, like Proofpoint focuses on, or [with] the MSPs that Daniel [Hofmann] and his team focuses on. It exists for everyone. And we just wanted to formulate one company that everyone knew did human-centric security for all customers, all sizes, all partners. We just thought that with the same vision and mission, just serving two different, complimentary market segments, it was like a perfect marriage. We can bring a dedicated focus and dedicated platforms together into a singular company that stands for human-centric security across every customer in every size. I think this is a big strategic leap forward for us.

SMBs in the past thought, “If our laptops are managed properly and patched properly, we’re fine.” That’s no longer the case because it’s not about devices that are vulnerable, it’s about people that are vulnerable. And that’s what led to us coming together because that’s exactly what Hornetsecurity was solving.

How significant is it for Proofpoint to be moving in this SMB direction, given your focus on the enterprise?

It’s pretty monumental for the company. As you can imagine, with us being solely focused in the enterprise in the past, we started getting customers that were mid-enterprise and MSPs coming to us. [MSPs have a] very fragmented set of solutions, which basically means they can’t have the right service levels, and the economics of their solutions fall apart because they’re spending most of the time formulating the architecture. And cyber has become a key component of MSP offerings. We heard that from the market—they said, ‘We love your email security product. Can you bring that in a multitenant fashion?’ We made some attempts at doing it, and we realized that while we have the reach, while we have the reputation, while we have the brand, and we have all the threat intelligence and all the threat analytics—we don’t have two things. We don’t have the right consolidated, simple, multitenant experience, as Hornetsecurity has. And we don’t have a partner program [focused on MSPs]. We loved what Hornetsecurity did on that front. They have global presence, but a lot of their business for investment purposes was focused on the European market. And we said, with our size, our scale, our reach, our balance sheet, our investment appetite, we will accelerate what [Hornetsecurity] would have had to do in building a global business. [We’ll be making] investments in the U.S. to scale the business, the aspirations and ambitions that Hornetsecurity already has. [That includes] attracting the best partners in the U.S.

How else has Hornetsecurity stood out when it comes to enabling MSPs around security?

What the MSPs are saying is, ‘I have to get Veeam for backup. Then I’m going to get Barracuda, or some other solution for email that doesn’t quite work in a multi-enant fashion.’ Then they get some other technology for doing compliance and [a product for] security awareness. It’s just a hodgepodge of things. That is the MSP world that exists in the U.S.—and existed in Europe before Hornetsecurity tackled it. They fundamentally simplified their solution and scaled their business, with better economics for partners and a larger value proposition to their customers. This is not something that anyone can easily build.

How does this build on your recently announced strategic partnership with Microsoft?

This acquisition makes that partnership even stronger. We’lll obviously use the threat intelligence and threat models that are going to be running on Azure. We already have some AI models from Azure that we are using, and that Hornetsecurity will start consuming as we start integrating the technology back ends over time. And then, at the end of the day, Microsoft wants MSPs to be successful with Microsoft 365. The partnership becomes even stronger and deeper with Microsoft with this acquisition.