Christopher Muffat (Dathena)
Singapore-headquartered data protection solutions vendor Dathena is now part of Proofpoint in a move aimed at strengthening the US-based cyber security vendor’s cloud-based solutions stack by adding artificial intelligence (AI)-based data classification to its offering.
Founded in 2016, Dathena bills itself as an innovator in AI-powered data protection. The company provides an AI-driven data discovery and classification platform designed to help users identify, classify and control their sensitive data, reduce risks and enhance their data protection framework.
Now, with the acquisition completed, Proofpoint plans to add Dathena’s AI-based data classification technology to its information and cloud security platform in a bid to help its customers better understand information risk and work to eliminate data loss.
“Data doesn’t lose itself. People lose data and organisations are increasingly adopting data loss prevention strategies to manage that risk,” said Gary Steele, CEO of Proofpoint. “Unfortunately, legacy products fall far short in actually preventing, detecting and investigating data loss incidents in real time or immediately after they occur.
“Integrating Dathena’s multi-patented, next-gen AI engine into our people-centric DLP [data loss prevention] solutions will provide our customers with unparalleled data protection and help them meet their challenging internal and regulatory compliance requirements,” he added.
It is claimed Dathena’s AI and cloud technologies will complement Proofpoint’s platform, enabling organisations to automatically discover and classify data in real-time and better understand information risk with industry specific out-of-the-box and custom AI and machine learning (ML)-driven data classification models.
“We are thrilled to welcome the talented Dathena team that built this cutting edge technology to Proofpoint and we look forward to working together to help our customers protect their data,” said Steele.
The acquisition, which sees Proofpoint increase its presence and investment in Asia, is also expected to give Dathena and its leadership team more global reach.
“Proofpoint has firmly established itself as a DLP leader and joining them provides us with the perfect opportunity to fulfill our mission of protecting the data and privacy of organisations around the world,” said Christopher Muffat, founder and CEO of Dathena.
“I’m incredibly proud of what we have achieved as a team through our unique technology and many innovations enabling better data protection.
“Working together with Proofpoint we will reach thousands of new customers, while further building trust in a digital world,” he added.
In September last year, Proofpoint revealed it was shaking up its regional distribution arrangements after completing an official review of its partner ecosystem across Asia Pacific.
As a result of the review, which included a formal request for proposal (RFP) process across the region, the company named Ingram Micro as an authorised distributor in Singapore, Malaysia, Australia and New Zealand.
It also retained M.Tech as a distributor, albeit with an expanded remit covering Singapore, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Indonesia, India, Malaysia, Taiwan and Australia, while ITSDI was named as its distributor in the Philippines.
“Proofpoint is committed to its 100 per cent channel go-to market strategy and we’re excited to build out a two-tiered distribution model to fuel our growth across the Asia Pacific theatre, expanding to new markets against growing demand for our market-leading solutions,” said Johann Ramchandra, Proofpoint Asia Pacific and Japan channel sales senior director, at the time.
