Name: Forcepoint Partner Program Launch - EMEA
Uploaded: 2026-03-18T15:15:06.405Z
Duration: 1 h 14 min 56 s
Description: Forcepoint Partner Program Launch - EMEA

Transcript for "Forcepoint Partner Program Launch - EMEA": Hi, everybody, and welcome. For those of you that don't know me, I'm Tim Pucccio. I I lead the global partner ecosystem here at Forcepoint. And I I wanted to personally thank each and every one of you for your time, your continued commitment to Forcepoint. Before we begin today, though, I just wanna take a moment and acknowledge what some of you and your families are living through right now. The the ongoing conflicts across The Middle East, the missile and drone attacks in The UAE, and the broader instability affecting so many of these communities across the region is is weighing heavily on all of us. As you all probably know, Samer, who's our EMEA theater leader, is based out of Dubai, was originally scheduled to join us today. But given the situation on the ground, he will be unable to join us, but we'll absolutely have him come on to our next partner webinar. We we we decided to move forward with today's session because we believe in the value of the partnership in in this community, especially during the difficult times. But we do this with the utmost humility and with a sincere hope for peace and for safety for everyone that's affected by the conflict. Again, thank you all for joining us today. And and, again, before we start, just a little bit of housekeeping. So like most, webinars, we will record this session. We'll share a link within the next twenty four hours for each of you to share it with your colleagues. Also, if you notice on the right hand side, we do have a chat, chat box and a opportunity for you to post questions. We encourage you to ask your questions and make wonderful comments like Van Dua from convert from, sorry, from Covalence who's already commented in the box, we ask you to do that, please. Also, later in the session, there'll be some documents posted in the document session. We have carved out some time at the end to make sure we answer as many, if not all, the questions in the AMA. So, with that, let's jump into the agenda today. So, I I'm really excited for the topics. First, we're gonna welcome, our CEO, Ryan Wyndham, to the stage, and he's gonna take a look and share, a perspective on the security market. Why this opportunity in front of us right now is, like, unlike anything in cybersecurity. And then, I'll take some time and give you a high level overview of the partner ecosystem, the partner program that we're launching today, and give you some insights into where we're going there. With that, while Ryan's joining me on stage, I I I would ask everyone to kinda comment, put down, like, these three little things in your notebook in front of you. As a thirty year go to market cyber security professional, I believe, and I think when you're done listening to Ryan, you'll believe that this is the biggest opportunity we've seen in data security in decades. Also, AI is fundamentally changing how the data behaves. Old security tools just can't close the gap. And then the third comment for everybody is as you listen to Ryan and as you watch, think about how many of your customers are telling you they simply cannot keep up with the data. They cannot keep up with the stack, and the stack is just not not working. So with that, I'd like to welcome Ryan to the stage, and I look forward to, listening and and learning from you, Ryan. Hey. Thank you very much, Tim. Yeah. Welcome, Ryan. Appreciate the intro. And I wanna thank everyone for joining us today, especially our channel solution and service provider partners in EMEA. Forcepoint, we've always been a channel led company, and I'm really grateful for both, you know, your flexibility in rescheduling, you know, today's event, but more importantly, the critical role that you've been playing in delivering data security everywhere to end user customers every day. So over the next few minutes, I'd like to recap the remarks that I made recently at our Aware webcast. So Aware is our virtual summit on AI risk? And for us, it's really about stepping back from the noise of the market and really having a more honest conversation about where data security is headed. Not just what's new, but what actually needs to change. And so I wanna highlight that conversation so we're aligned on what's happening in the industry and how we together can differentiate around data security in a way that creates durable, repeatable value for customers and predictable growth for you, our partners. So I'm gonna share my perspective, and then I'll talk a little bit about capabilities and solutions that we announced a couple of weeks ago. So I wanna start with a simple observation, and that is that the biggest shift in security really is not any new threat or new compliance regulation. It's that AI has fundamentally changed the behavior of data itself. Data used to be predictable. It was largely created by people. It lived in known systems, and it moved at a pace that security teams could track. I think we all recognize though that that world no longer exists. And the reason is because you've now got AI generating data continuously. You know, it's rewriting it. It's summarizing it. It's expanding upon it, and it's spreading that data across SaaS applications, AI tools, and workflows, and it's doing it effectively instantly. So I think about it as AI effectively animating data. It's really brought data to life and made that data self perpetuating. And so once you have that data paradigm changing in that way, the old way of securing the data has really stopped working. So the problem isn't that most legacy models, you know, they're not just outdated. They're incompatible with the AI era. That's because old security was built on three assumptions. And, you know, I actually started my career as a network and systems engineer. So these assumptions are kind of, you know, near and dear to me. You may recognize some of them too. You know, the first one that, you know, you can preassign access to data and then just be done. So let's say somebody new would join the company. You know, you'd add them to a group. If they were in finance, you put them in the finance group. And that group would get access to data via, you know, an access control list that was on, you know, file stores or database. But that only works when data stays in known places, and it changes very slowly. The second big assumption is that you can classify data once and then just trust the label that you've that you've used. You know? But that breaks because AI now is constantly generating new versions, summaries, and derivatives. And, you know, one of the reasons why we all like to use AI is oftentimes, you know, that output is more sensitive, and more, you know, insightful, more meaningful than the original data inputs. The third big assumption, that no longer holds is that you can control risk with static rules like, you know, allow or block. And that only works when you've got predictable behavior, not data and risk that are changing in real time. And so, you know, when you step back and you think about these assumptions, you recognize that when they break, the entire model that they're based upon breaks with them. And that's why, you know, we have so many CSOs that are telling us, you know, that their stack can't keep up. And it's not because they, the CSOs, or even the vendors they're using, you know, don't understand the problem. They they get it. I think we're all feeling this. But it's because their tools were they're never driven, or designed for AI boundaryless data, right, that is effectively self perpetuating and needs to be, you know, secured itself. And so that creates both, you know, an urgency and opportunity, you know, because end users are actively looking for trusted advisers who can help them rethink how data security should work in this new AI era. You know, AI is not just increasing the volume of data. It really compresses time as well. Right? It's time between the creation, the exposure, and impact. You know, AI is creating data while we are sleeping, you know, especially if we're using, agentic AI. It's really turning every millisecond of data use into a security decision. That is why the industry needs a new model. So for many of your end user customers, you know, visibility continues to be a huge challenge. You know? You can't control what you can't see. Right? So the first thing is you really have to see where your sensitive data actually lives. But you need to see that not just as a snapshot in time. Right? That maybe used to work, but now as data's moving so quickly throughout, you know, the enterprise or, you know, government agency or whatever, you know, the the business may be, you know, you've gotta have visibility. And even when you have that, though, you have a critical challenge to fix the risk immediately before, you know, you get a breach or a regulatory fine or you incur any sort of brand damage. So especially data risk, you know, that can change in the blink of an eye, and that's what we see now. You know? So this is the gap I talk a lot about. It's the gap that keeps widening, you know, between visibility and control. And when, you know, enforcement lags behind the user or the device behavior, you get that. Right? So problem goes beyond just visibility. It's the timing of the security response. And I don't see this gap as a failure. I see it as, you know, signal, something to learn from. And I think the only real solution is a single continuous loop where you're able to identify risk and act immediately. And the only way to keep up with AI is to provide both visibility and control in a continuous loop because visibility without action is not protection, and action without understanding isn't either. In fact, that's dangerous. So what's needed is security that can understand data as it's being created, you know, recognize when risk changes, and make decisions fast enough to stay relevant without waiting on humans to intervene. So you might ask, what replaces the old world? Well, it's self aware data security. And for those of you who joined our aware events, you heard me talk about our vision. Self aware data security doesn't imply autonomy or sentience. It's security that is context aware, adaptive, and continuous. It's guided by what's happening right now. And that's the baseline for securing AI driven boundaryless data, and it's a high bar. And for our partners, this isn't just a technology shift. This is an opportunity to lead a more strategic conversation with your end user customers about how security needs to evolve in this new era. So this is really a different way of thinking because the new data landscape, it doesn't wait for human reviews or or tuning. It moves now. Forcepoint's platform moves with it. It's real time, adaptive, contextual. Got AI that's built in, not bolted on. And we believe strongly this is the model that the next decade's going to run on. It's powered by our AI mesh. It's our unified system. It knows where risk is by discovering and classifying all data. It adapts policy by evaluating context for behavior, and it protects immediately. It automatically enforces the right action in the moment the data is created, used, or moved. And, you know, most importantly, you know, it's not based on access control lists. It's not dependent on perimeter controls, and it's not driven by old assumptions that were hard coded months ago. So the Forcepoint Data Security Cloud, this is, you know, the next steps that we're taking in how we deliver this model. So we advanced Forcepoint Data Security Cloud to operationalize the self aware data security at scale. And we've aligned our global partner program alongside it so that we can make it easier for you to differentiate around data security and build predictable, repeatable practices on our data security cloud. So here's what we announced back on March 4. One, your new AI aware policy creation and automation that can recommend an enforcement policy in seconds. Number two, expanded support for AI driven analytics and collaboration workflows, like, you know, coverage for cloud data lakes. And three, a unified agent that protects data on the endpoint before it leaves the device. So this is all part of our unified platform that's bringing together DSPM, DLP SaaS, and adaptive enforcement under a single policy framework. So we built these advancements for one reason, to help security teams act before risk becomes impact. And we continue to deliver protection that follows data into the environments where risk now forms. So these data security cloud enhancements, they give you, our partners, a tangible way to lead on securing AI adoption, our new AI assistant called ARIA that stands for adaptive risk intelligence assistance. So ARIA identifies policy gaps like unprotected copilots. It generates enforceable policies using, you know, plain English, and it deploys them across channels from a single interface. So in just a minute, you know, Tim's gonna share how we're evolving the partner program to support this opportunity. You know, together, the updates we're just talking about to the platform, the program updates Tim is gonna talk about, that's gonna enable something bigger than any single feature. It's gonna enable data security everywhere, And that means your customers contain data sprawl, secure generative AI, reduce insider risk, and simplify compliance with confidence that security decisions happen in time to matter. It means they can adopt AI faster, that they can collaborate more openly knowing that security is working with the business, not against it. And for you, it means a clear path to differentiated repeatable revenue built around data security outcomes. And data security everywhere is the outcome that we're all working toward. So what does this mean for all of us? Clearly, AI has changed how data behaves today. No question about it. And that means that data security has become a real time problem. And self aware data security is how we solve that problem. And data security cloud is how we deliver it at scale. So for customers, that means confidence. For you, our partners, that means leadership. The ability to go in and lead a different conversation that's super relevant and and, you know, hits on the moment on how to turn awareness into adaptive protection to differentiate around a unified platform and a shared perspective on where our industry is headed. So if you weren't able to attend our aware event, I encourage you to catch the on demand sessions. You know, learn more about this new model for data security. If you do that, you're gonna hear from Liberty University about their journey in AI data security. You'll hear from Forrester analyst, Heidi Shea, and other members of our team on why this shift matters now, and you'll see how our innovations bring it all together. Because I firmly believe that the partners who recognize this shift and lead with it, you guys are going to define the next decade of data security. So I look forward to building that future together with you. And I'd like to invite, you know, Tim back, to share a little bit more about our our our partner program. So, Tim, come on back up here. That's a tough act to follow, Ryan. Extremely insightful and and helpful. So so thank you. Just a few comments, though, before you leave. I I jotted down my high level takeaways. The first one is, you know, data AI has just invalidated the legacy security models. And this opportunity is real, and it's now, and it's here for all of us. So so that was my first. The second one, and we're sharing this across the globe from CISOs and from security teams, They know they have a problem. They need trusted advisers who can engage with them to help them solve the use cases that they're facing today, and we believe partnering together, we can help you get there. The last one I'll share is in this maybe I might be feeding this in a little bit. I believe that the platform that we've developed here at Forcepoint and the solutions we're delivering in the market represent a minimal opportunity. It's the five to seven x opportunity for services and solutions you can wrap around our. platform that will help you build a sustainable business for for the future. So, Ryan, I'm not sure if I missed any other key highlights that you wanted to point out there, but those are the takeaways I took. Yeah. No. I mean, I think, you hit on all all all the big ones, and I just think it's, it's great how interested our customers are in hearing about this. I mean, it's very easy to get meetings with customers right now when you're talking about AI data security. They are looking for for answers, I think, you know, we got a big a big piece of it here together with with the partners. Great. So, thank, you. give me give me about ten minutes, and then I'm gonna have you come back on stage for q and a. I'm sure some of the partners have a few questions for you and for myself. So thank you. thing. Thank you, Tim. So team, why did we change the partner program is where I wanna start. So over the past twelve months, I've personally had the opportunity to travel the globe, meet with many of you many of you in your offices in the theaters. Candidly, I've met with over a 100 partners. And and the message from you was clear. One, bring stability to the platform and deliver solutions that are meeting the market today. In addition to that, though, from a partner program perspective, you asked for the the the same almost the same thing everywhere I went. The ability to develop a practice that drives long term retainable revenue, economics in the program that support services and solution growth, and probably most important was predictable engagement. What I heard was when you bring us into a customer and when you bring us into one of your accounts or relationship you've built over the last five, ten, twenty years, you wanna know exactly what that experience is gonna feel like. So as a team, we spent a lot of time making sure that the program met those demands. So just at a at a at a very high level, the results say it all. I'm I'm not gonna read the slide to everybody here, but the momentum this ecosystem has built in the last year is tremendous. We delivered over 35% net new business growth with our partners that have built incredible momentum. I think you all know that 98% of our revenue flows through our partner ecosystem, which makes us one of the only channel companies out there in our space. We are committed to that. And then we lastly, we spent a great deal of time over the last twelve months getting out to each of our partners, getting out in front of our sales teams, our SC teams, your sales team, SCTs, really making sure we had enablement in place. With these tailwinds and with these, great accomplishments, it was actually I hate to simplify this, but what we did was we simplified the partner program, brought it back to a very basic foundational program based on growth tiers for your total revenue and certifications and capabilities. Obviously, we want you to join. It really, to me, is about the journey from an authorized to a titanium level partner, becoming educated on the use cases, and making sure that you are able to do the most with your customers when it matters and take advantage of that. The tiers are are intentionally meant to be very simple and clear so that you can, not think about that, but think about our solutions. So from an economics perspective, let's just let's just be really clear. I need to make sure and we needed to make sure that we built a program that had competitive margins across all of the layers that was designed around allowing for services led delivery, allowing for you to expand your customer base. We know that customers that buy services from you and leveraging our technology are nine x more, nine times more successful and will expand into adjacent technology. So we wanna encourage that. We also enhanced and and really tightened up the deal registration process. It matters to me. Deal registration and and incumbency are the two things that I believe are critical in any partner program. So we spend a lot of time making sure that you have the adequate protections, and you truly get the advantage for bringing forward new opportunities, cross sell, upsell, and expansion. Okay. So what else have we done? So the economics, the teams can take you through in detail on all the specifics and how to mature through. But we also felt it was re really important, and I heard from each of you that we needed to reinvest in some of the things that we did great in the past. So we've doubled down on our channel coverage. I I believe I have the highest world class channel ecosystem, channel manager team in in any industry. I encourage you to make sure you engage with them, you work with them. We simplified our partner hub, consolidated that underneath our customer hub, and joined it together as one hub, which allows you great access to more enhanced content, partner ready assets. And we've we've recently actually have hired a communications leader for the channel team to help us really get efficient at sharing all the current use cases and the things that are happening. And lastly, we've we've greatly simplified the MDF process, and and we believe it make it a lot easier for us to kind of slip into your motion and help you be successful with your business. In addition to that, beyond the go to market resources, we've we've also doubled back on our enablement, and we still have a long way to go here. I'm I'm not naive. We have built out a full course curriculum for sales, presales, and post sales across all of our products and solution and continue to enhance that. You can find it on the hub. You can engage with In addition, all of the training we did with our sales teams and SE teams in regions has equipped them to come on-site to your offices locally or to jump on webinars and facilitate boot camps to work with each of you, work with each of your, teams to make sure they're educated. The use cases that are in the market today are changing so fast, and I believe we're delivering great content. So leverage those teams, please. Leverage those teams. Beyond economics, go to market investments, and and, frankly, enablement for our partners, The last thing is what Ryan talked about. Our data security every everywhere platform is the best and most comprehensive solution you will find in the industry. And we as we continue to invest in this, we believe this allows you to meet your customers where they are. They don't have to bite off the entire thing at one time, but every single one of your customers has got a conversation going on of how are they gonna solve for data security. And our teams in partnership with you can equip you with those conversations and help you drive that forward. So in in and just in closing around the partner program, I encourage you to work directly with the channel managers and, have deeper conversations. Make sure that you you are ready to get going. Engage that team. Engage us. And then lastly, I want you to be vocal. Most of you are. You you're not shy with me ever, but be vocal about what you wanna see next where we can take this to help you build your business because we truly believe if you're building your business successfully, we're all gonna benefit from it. So with that, I'm gonna close out the partner session and and ask Ryan if he could come back up on stage. Hey, Tim. Hey, Ryan. Give give me a second to just kind of to go through some of the partner questions here and. and see we've we've unfortunately, we only have, like, four minutes left, but let's let's get through some, and then we can come back. Here's an interest I have a partner from Turkey. Actually, I think I know exactly who asked this question based on the question. So listen. Forcepoint as a company has been around for a long time. Are you growing? Are you profitable? And how is it that you guys believe you have staying power? So, Ryan, I think that's directed directly at you. Yeah. Sure. Happy to happy to take that one. So yes. You I know, I guess I get the reason for the question. You guys are making a business decision where to invest, you know, your time, your people. You want confidence that we'll be here and that we'll be growing. So in one little anecdote, I'm, you know, CEO now here at Forcepoint. I actually joined the company. I haven't been here the whole time, but in the early two thousands back when it was it was WebSense. So the company has been around for a long time. We have been, you know, a leader in data security since about 2006. So I was here when we acquired it was Port Authority that gave us that technology, that DLP technology that we've been building upon and, you know, adding CASB and DSPM too. So, certainly, we have had a lot of staying power. We are now backed by Francisco Partners, one of the largest and most successful private equity companies in The US and really around the globe. So, you know, we've made a strategic choice to really focus on data security. So we're not kind of the sprawling platform vendor trying to be everything to everyone. And so, you know, that focus really gives us, you know, clarity in where we invest in r and d, our go to market. And, you know, hopefully, as you guys are seeing here, how we show up for for our partners. So, you know, we're making a lot of investment here, and I hope you're seeing that. You know, the data security cloud enhancements, just as an example, ARIA, the new partner program, know, you these don't happen if we're not, you know, confident in our trajectory. And, certainly, we're getting a lot of signal from the market as well, which I'm sure you guys are. Also, as these, you know, customers are trying to figure out how do we, you know, how do we secure data in this kind of new new AI era. So in terms of investments, I guess, the on the channel side, you know, we're as Tim was mentioning, we're building this new global partner program, hiring a lot of new channel leadership as well. You know, we're redesigning the economics, and that's not something you do if you don't bet on growth. So, yes, we're we're we're profitable. We're growing, and we expect to continue that trajectory that we've we've we've been on. Great. Thanks, Ryan. So I'm gonna shift. There's another question in here that I'll I'll take and answer. So you mentioned training and enablement. How do we find the training enablement? Very simple question. So that actually comes from a partner out of Spain. But couple things. One, I encourage you to visit our website. Go to the partner hub. You can find it right off of our main page. Go in there. There is a well defined, sales presales and post sales enablement curriculum that's in place that will allow you to get your certifications for each of those solutions. Also, we've spent a great deal of time in the back half of this year developing sales plays, that are available for you to work into your regular conversation. In the field level, we can help you engage in those. And then for 2026, and we really have kicked this off in in every region, Our local teams are equipped with boot camp capabilities to come on-site with you and make sure you understand this. I I find those extremely effective when you're sitting in a room and you're having a deep conversation about the use cases you're running into with your customers. So, I I just encourage you to do that. Again, I'm always gonna revert back to, if you have questions, please reach out to the channel managers. Alright. Alright, Brian. I think this will be the last one. Probably, you got thirty seconds since we wanna respect people's time. Sure. I'm and why would I invest in Forcepoint versus some other company in cybersecurity? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I'll make it I'll make it quick. I mean, I think there's a question, you know, every every vendor on your shortlist is gonna say, you know, their category is the one that matters and they're the most important vendor. But let me tell you, you know, why I think, you know, Forcepoint specifically is the right vendor for you now in this world. I mean, basically, it's what I just walked you through. AI is changing data behavior, you know, that gap between visibility and control that need to really have real time enforcement that's based on risk. That's not a future problem. That's a problem that all your customers are dealing with, you know, right now. This gen AI adoption, new compliance mandates around AI generated content. That's, you know, that's what everyone wants to talk about. And so all that's creating all this urgent demand for exactly what Forcepoint delivers. So, you know, we've got DLP, DSPM together under a single policy framework. We've got that adaptive enforcement built in. You know, some vendors can do some piece of that. None can cover, you know, data security across the entire environment, endpoint cloud, SaaS, AI tools in a single platform. So that's the quick, that's the quick answer. That was efficient, Ryan. Hey, partners. I I just wanna say, first off, thank you. It's really important to me. So there are probably seven or eight additional questions that are posted in the q and a. My commitment is we'll get back to you in the twenty next twenty four to forty eight hours with very succinct answers as to your questions and make sure you have what you need. So, again, I wanna thank everybody for their continued commitment. Please leverage the team. Leverage us. I I I know the momentum we're building and what we're seeing in our pipeline and the the opportunities and the customers we're winning in is amazing right now. So let's take advantage of it. Press us to be the best every day, and have a wonderful day, folks. Thank you.