Proofpoint To Lay Off 280 Employees

However, ‘we expect to end 2024 with a similar headcount to where we started the year,’ the private equity-owned cybersecurity vendor said.

Proofpoint disclosed Wednesday that a round of layoffs will impact 280 employees, one of the largest cutbacks among cybersecurity vendors in recent months.

The news was first reported by Calcalist, which indicated that the layoffs amount to about 6 percent of Proofpoint’s worldwide staff of 4,500.

[Related: Jamf Says Layoffs Will Impact 6 Percent Of Staff]

“In order to position Proofpoint for continued and long-term success as a world-class business operating at scale, we have made the difficult decision to reduce our current workforce by about 280 positions globally,” Proofpoint said in a statement provided to CRN Wednesday.

Proofpoint, a major provider of email security and data protection tools, said in the statement that the layoffs come as part of a “forward-looking company strategy of aligning our investments and hiring to our strategic priorities.”

This strategy includes an effort by the private equity-owned company to utilize a “global talent pool” as well as “streamlining our organization with fewer management layers,” Proofpoint said.

“By the middle of 2024, we anticipate nearly half of the eliminated positions will be transitioned to our global centers in Ireland and Argentina,” the company said in its statement Wednesday. “Coupled with continued hiring aligned with our key priorities, we expect to end 2024 with a similar headcount to where we started the year.”

The move comes two months after Proofpoint named a new CEO, its second CEO switch since 2022. Sumit Dhawan, formerly the president of VMware, was named Proofpoint’s new chief executive in late November.

Dhawan succeeded Ashan Willy, who departed in October after less than two years in the CEO role at Proofpoint.

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

The company joins a lengthy list of cybersecurity vendors that have reduced staff over the past two years, though Proofpoint’s job reduction is the largest in the cybersecurity industry announced in 2024 so far.

Other major layoff rounds among cybersecurity firms recently included Splunk’s elimination of about 537 employees in November and layoffs at Rapid7 that impacted 470 employees in August.