Trustifi CEO Aims To Make Email Security Easier, More Profitable For MSPs

‘Our philosophy is that email security should be complete. It should include the core protections organizations need, those protections should work together and the platform should continue learning from new threats without requiring constant manual tuning. We've built a system that brings those pieces together in a way that's easy for customers and easy for partners,’ says new Trustifi CEO Jeff Spridgeon.

When Jeff Spridgeon joined Trustifi as CEO, he wasn't just looking for another technology leadership role. The longtime channel executive saw an opportunity to lead a company that had already solved a difficult cybersecurity challenge: delivering powerful email protection without overwhelming the customers and partners using it.

Spridgeon, whose career includes leadership roles at Dell Technologies and Mimecast, said Trustifi stood out because of its ability to simplify one of the most complicated areas of cybersecurity while continuing to innovate against a rapidly changing threat landscape.

"When I dug into the company, what it's providing, I realized that there was something here that was potentially special," Spridgeon told CRN in an exclusive interview. "What I learned was that Trustifi was solving a very complicated problem in a very simple way for the people who use it, and that's a hard thing to do, particularly in this space."

Trustifi Tuesday disclosed Spridgeon’s appointment after he joined the company this spring. The New York-based company provides AI-driven email security offerings that aim to protect organizations against phishing, ransomware, business email compromise and data loss.

Now in the early stages of his tenure, Spridgeon is focused on understanding the business, strengthening execution and building even deeper relationships with MSPs. He said his first priority has been listening to employees, customers and partners to identify where Trustifi can invest and accelerate growth.

"Before you can make meaningful changes, you have to understand the business," he said. "I've been working on gaining a great understanding of where the company's been, what capabilities we have and maybe the stress points we have in our current level of investment with people and process."

Looking ahead, he believes Trustifi's biggest opportunity lies in helping MSPs manage security more efficiently as they scale. As MSPs continue acquiring other MSPs and standardizing their technology stacks, he sees a need for solutions that reduce complexity and make migrations easier. "The biggest growth opportunity that we've identified is really with MSPs themselves," he said.

CRN spoke further with the CEO about the company’s roadmap, how he will deepen its partner commitment and what MSPs can expect from the vendor over the next year.

What attracted you to Trustifi at this point in your career? What made this the right opportunity?

That's a great question because I think the answer has a couple of different facets. First of all, from a career perspective, becoming the CEO of a company was always something I wanted to do eventually. So when I was approached about this opportunity, it was immediately interesting on that level. But once I started digging into the company—what it does, the technology, the people—that's when it became something much bigger for me.

What really stood out was that Trustifi is solving an incredibly complicated problem in a very simple way for the people who use it. That's actually a very hard thing to do, especially in cybersecurity. There are plenty of companies with good technology, but making that technology easy for partners and customers is much more difficult.

As I learned more, I saw an AI component that is constantly keeping up with the changing threat landscape. I saw an interface that allows partners to administer multiple customers from one common platform, which is incredibly valuable for MSPs. And then I learned something that honestly surprised me: we already had thousands of customers. That told me there was real market validation. There was already proof that customers wanted what Trustifi was delivering. When you combine the technology, the people, the history of the company and the customer base, all of those elements came together and made me think, “I'd love to run this company.”

You spent time at Dell and Mimecast, among other companies. How has that experience prepared you for this role?

One of the biggest things is that I've been involved in scaling companies several times throughout my career. I've had the opportunity to watch organizations grow, and I've learned what healthy, sustainable growth actually looks like. As revenue increases, how do you invest? How do you continue growing without losing sight of customer outcomes? Those are lessons you only really learn by doing it.

The other perspective I've gained is from working at companies that have already reached significant scale, like Dell. You get to see what good looks like when an organization is operating at a very high level. You can look at those companies and say, “When we grow up someday, this is how we want to operate.”

The third piece is partnerships. Throughout my career, I've spent a tremendous amount of time building strategic partnerships, so I think I've developed a pretty good sense for what good partnering looks like. That's especially important at Trustifi because our future depends on building strong relationships with MSPs and other partners. If we're going to move this business forward, we have to become an outstanding partner ourselves.

You're about 60 days into the role. What have your priorities been during your first 100 days?

I approached my first 100 days with the mindset that before you can make meaningful changes, you have to understand the business. So my first priority has been gaining a really deep understanding of where the company has been, what capabilities we already have and where there may be stress points, whether that's in people, processes or investments. That's really what I've been focused on during these first couple of months: listening, learning and getting a complete picture of the organization.

Now we're moving into the next phase, which is determining, together with the leadership team, where we should invest more aggressively, what we're already doing well and should continue doing, and what we might stop doing because it isn't helping us move the business forward.

Ultimately, every decision comes back to the same question: What helps us accelerate growth while delivering the outcomes our customers, partners and investors expect?

What should partners expect to see change or accelerate under your leadership?

I think the biggest thing partners should expect is a relentless focus on execution, stronger communication and better support. One of the things we're doing right now is literally sitting down with our existing partners and having detailed conversations about the relationship. We're asking them how we're supporting them today, where we're doing well, where we're falling short, how the product fits into the business they're trying to build, how customer success is working for them … everything.

Those aren't surface-level conversations. They're deep discussions about what partners actually need from us to grow their businesses. What's exciting is that those conversations are directly influencing what we're building. We're developing products, support structures and services that are specifically designed around what our partners are telling us they need. The expectation is that if we build those capabilities well for our existing partners, every new partner that joins Trustifi benefits from that work too. That's really the approach we're taking. This isn't about building technology in isolation. It's about building technology and services that help our partners succeed because, at the end of the day, when they grow, we grow with them.

So how do you plan to deepen Trustifi's commitment to MSPs?

One of the things that's been identified to me personally by a number of our MSP partners is just how much complexity—and cost—is involved in switching technology. A lot of MSPs today are growing through acquisition. They're buying smaller MSPs, bringing them into a larger organization and then standardizing on a single technology stack across all of those customers. That sounds straightforward, but it's actually a tremendous amount of work.

When you acquire another MSP, you're not just changing software; you're migrating customers, communicating with clients about what's changing, training people on new platforms and managing all of that without disrupting the customer experience. It's a huge burden from both a time and operational perspective.

What we're doing is building systems, processes and even consulting resources that make those transitions much easier. We're creating messaging, implementation guidance and tools that help partners move from one platform to another with as little friction as possible.

The second piece is continuing to improve the way MSPs actually administer our technology. We're making it easier for them to manage email security, encryption, compliance and user training across multiple customers through one interface that's efficient and simple to use. If we can save partners time every day while also helping them grow, that's a pretty meaningful value proposition.

Where do you see the biggest growth opportunities for your partner ecosystem right now?

The biggest opportunity we've identified is really with MSPs themselves, particularly the larger organizations. As MSPs continue to scale, they need solutions that are built specifically for the way they operate. They need to be able to deploy standardized email security, outbound encryption and security awareness training across hundreds, or sometimes thousands, of end customers without creating additional operational complexity.

That's where we think we have a very compelling story. It's not just that we provide those capabilities. It's that we provide them in a way that's easy to deploy, easy to switch to and easy to administer across multiple clients. At the same time, we're helping partners build profitable recurring services around those offerings. The larger an MSP becomes, the more important operational efficiency becomes, and that's exactly where we believe Trustifi can make a meaningful difference.

What differentiates Trustifi in such a crowded email security market?

The first word that comes to mind is simplicity. If you look across the email security market, there are a lot of good technologies available. But many of them are complicated to understand, complicated to implement and sometimes even complicated to buy. Customers often find themselves asking, “What exactly do I need? Which products do I actually have to purchase? How do all of these pieces fit together?”

We've tried to remove that complexity. Our philosophy is that email security should be complete. It should include the core protections organizations need, those protections should work together and the platform should continue learning from new threats without requiring constant manual tuning. We've built a system that brings those pieces together in a way that's easy for customers and easy for partners.

At the end of the day, cybersecurity is already difficult enough because the threat landscape keeps changing. We don't think the technology protecting you should make your life harder.

Attackers are increasingly using AI to launch more sophisticated phishing and business email compromise attacks. So how is Trustifi helping partners fight AI with AI?

There are really two major components to that. The first is the AI engine that's at the core of our security platform. It's constantly learning and adapting based on the threats it encounters. Let's say an MSP has 100 customers running Trustifi. If one of those organizations receives a brand-new phishing attack that nobody has seen before, our platform detects it, learns from it and immediately extends that protection across the rest of the customer base.

The MSP doesn't have to manually create new policies or push updates. The AI engine is continuously improving itself, so every new threat helps strengthen protections for every customer using the platform. That's incredibly powerful because attackers aren't standing still anymore. They're constantly changing their techniques, so your defenses have to evolve just as quickly.

The second piece is our AI-enabled security awareness training. Imagine a sophisticated phishing email makes it into an organization. Traditionally, you'd block it if you could, maybe send out an email warning employees about it and move on.

We've taken a different approach. That actual email, the real attack your organization received, can become the basis for a security awareness exercise. Within a matter of seconds, employees can complete a short training session built around the exact type of attack their company experienced.

Instead of learning from generic examples that may or may not be relevant, they're learning from something that actually happened to their organization. We think that's a much more effective way to educate users because it's timely, it's real and it's immediately applicable. Every attack becomes an opportunity to strengthen both the technology and the people using it, and that's really where AI becomes such a powerful force multiplier.

What role do you see security awareness training playing alongside traditional email security controls? Do you think those two things have to go hand in hand moving forward?

I absolutely believe they have to go hand in hand. AI is actually one of the biggest reasons why that's true. If you look at the attacks we're seeing today, many of them aren't traditional attacks where there's a malicious link or some kind of obvious payload attached. They're much more behavioral. The attacker is trying to manipulate the person receiving the email. They're trying to create a situation where someone takes an action they normally wouldn't take because the message appears to come from someone they trust … someone who has the authority or permission to ask them to do something.

So there's a combination of things that are required to really protect an organization from that type of threat. First, you need AI-powered filtering that can look for the signals. Is this an impersonation attack? Is this behavior normal for this person? Is the timing of the communication appropriate? Are there things about the message that don't match what we would typically expect?

But then you also have to acknowledge that, at some point, something might get through. No security system is perfect. If that message does reach an employee, you want that person to have the knowledge and awareness to recognize it and make the right decision.

That's why I don't think you can protect an organization with just one piece of the puzzle. You can't rely only on user training, and you can't rely only on technology. You need both. You need the technology helping identify and stop threats, and you need people who understand what they're seeing and know how to respond. That's how you get a complete security solution.

What are some of the things you want to accomplish in your first year as CEO?

The first thing I want to make sure we do is build the strongest possible leadership team, people who know how to build companies, how to partner effectively and how to bring together world-class teams across technology, sales and customer support. We're operating in a very competitive market. There are a lot of capable companies out there, and if we're going to compete at the highest level, we have to look, act and operate like a world-class organization. That's a big part of the journey.

The second piece is continuing to simplify our offering and make our value proposition even clearer. We want it to become obvious that Trustifi was built specifically for a purpose: helping small and midsized businesses and the service providers that support them. There are millions of organizations that don't have large internal IT teams, and they rely on MSPs to provide the technology expertise they need. We want Trustifi to be the solution those providers immediately think of when they need to solve email security challenges.

Our goal is to make the platform so purpose-built, so easy to use and so aligned with the MSP business model that there really isn't another obvious choice.

What is your message to partners about what they should expect from Trustifi under your leadership?

The first thing I would say is that partners should expect Trustifi to continue being out in front of the market with a solution that solves the email security challenge in the right way.

From a technology perspective, they should expect us to continue delivering a complete solution that is simple to understand, simple to deploy and simple to manage. We're doing that today, and we're going to continue making it better.

The second thing is that they should expect Trustifi to be the company they want to partner with. Our goal is to build something that's uniquely designed around their needs, something that saves them time, saves them money and helps them run their businesses more efficiently. We want our partners to be able to go to their customers and demonstrate leadership in security because they're working with Trustifi.

The other thing I want partners to know is that responsiveness matters to us.

One of the things I've learned in my first 60 days here is that when I talk to customers and partners and ask them what they think about Trustifi, one of the things they consistently mention is how responsive we are. They say we listen, we engage and we actually respond to their needs in a way that stands out. That is something we want to protect and build on.

Technology is important, obviously. The platform has to be excellent. But the relationship matters just as much. Partners should expect us to be a company that's easy to work with, that listens to them and that is committed to helping them succeed.