Cloudflare Touts Its New Area 1 Email Security As Key To Zero Trust Future

‘Email has always been the gap in the zero trust conversation. Now Cloudflare has it,’ says Dom Yip, senior manager of solutions engineering at Cloudflare, during a session at XChange 2022.

Cloudflare has wasted little time making its newly acquired Area 1 Security email technology a centerpiece of its zero trust products now being offered to channel partners.

At CRN parent The Channel Company’s XChange 2022 conference in Denver, Cloudflare executives touted the benefits of Area 1’s zero trust email security defenses that San Francisco-based Cloudflare acquired earlier this year when it purchased San Mateo, Calif.-based Area 1 for $162 million.

“It’s something the companies have invested in a lot,” Dom Yip, senior manager of solutions engineering at Cloudflare, said of extending zero trust principles to email security technologies. “It’s something moving ahead very quickly.”

Yip, who previously was director of sales engineering at Area 1 Security before the acquisition, said that

because email has become the top threat attack vector for phishing attacks, the demand for email security products is estimated at about $10 billion. “There is a market there for us,” Yip said.

Adopting zero trust products, whether they’re for networks or email, is part of a “journey” for some companies that aren’t sure how to proceed with upgrading their overall security systems.

Yip told attendees that pre-emptive detection is key to Area 1’s email security technology, allowing system defenders to intercept suspicious emails before they even arrive in an employee’s inbox.

After the XChange session, Yip told CRN that Cloudflare’s acquisition of Area 1’s technology, now known as Cloudflare Area 1 Security, just made sense.

“Email has always been the gap in the zero trust conversation,” he said of the zero trust movement in general. “Now Cloudflare has it.”

Matt Johnson, CEO of SOClogix, a Baltimore-based MSSP, told CRN that it was clear Cloudflare is really accelerating its new Area 1 email technology offerings.

“They’re constantly adding new products,” said Johnson, whose company is a Clouflare partner. “This new email product is going to be really good for them. They’re trying to get MSPs and MSSPs on board.”

He added that zero trust, which is a security framework requiring all users be continuously authenticated, authorized and validated in order to access systems, is now all the rage—and even mandated in certain circumstances by the federal government.

“It’s where everything is going these days,” he said.

Earlier this summer, Cloudflare, long known as a security and performance services vendor, rolled out its new “Cloudflare One Partner Program” that fully integrated its new email technology into one comprehensive product package that’s built upon the company’s zero trust, Network as a Service and cloud email security offerings.

At the XChange session, Dawn Ringstaff, head of channel for the Cloudflare One Partner Program, told attendees that the new program is a way to ease customers onto the zero trust ramp.

A number of zero trust products, including email, are being offered in bundles to make it easier and more affordable for companies to start adopting Cloudflare’s offerings, she said.