Sumit Dhawan takes point man position as new CEO of Proofpoint

The former VMware exec will take the reins from Proofpoint CFO Rémi Thomas who’d been serving as interim CEO since October

Cybersecurity and compliance vendor, Proofpoint has announced Sumit Dhawan as its new CEO.

Rémi Thomas, Proofpoint's chief financial officer, who has been acting as the vendor's interim CEO since 25 October, will continue to serve as the company's CFO.

Dhawan is a seasoned technology leader with a history of building market-leading security, cloud, and end-user computing businesses.

He most recently held the position of president of VMware, where Dhawan was responsible for driving over $13bn 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 CEO 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 organisations as their cybersecurity partner of choice," said Dhawan.

"I'm honoured to join a leader at the forefront of cybersecurity innovation and to shepherd its continuing and unwavering commitment to helping organisations 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 offering to address the most frequent form of data loss including, misdirected email and data exfiltration.

"The Proofpoint board of directors could not be more excited to partner with Dhawan 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 organisations today."