With Azure as a foundation, the companies say they will be able to provide organisations worldwide with stronger threat protection, enhanced data security, and greater operational efficiency - and the expanded partnership drives “scalable innovation and provides mutual customers with human-centric security security capabilities to proactively detect and mitigate a wide array of threats that target people and the data they work with”.

Proofpoint says that last year, the majority of publicly reported data breaches were due to human-centric compromises; of these, email, data loss, mis-delivery, malicious insider, and misconfiguration accounted for 90% of the underlying causes.

“Human-centric security is about enabling the digital workspace. And for most of our enterprise customers, that digital workspace is Microsoft,” said Darren Lee, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Threat Protection Group at Proofpoint. “Built on top of Microsoft Azure, we’re delivering advanced, preventive protection for the most important layer in the cybersecurity ecosystem —the human layer. We’re equipping organisations with the capabilities they need to reduce human risk at scale and thrive in their digital workspace.”

“Microsoft Azure is the cloud platform of choice for security vendors across the industry,” said Kathleen Brown, Corporate Vice President, Americas Enterprise at Microsoft. “Today’s announcement is a great example of how Azure provides powerful cloud infrastructure to help Microsoft, and our partners meet our mutual customers’ evolving security requirements.”

Proofpoint notes that with Azure as an engine for innovation, it plans to accelerate the growth of new features across its human-centric security platform, ensuring enhanced protection for mutual customers—“including faster threat detection, reduced operational complexity, and more effective risk mitigation”.

“As part of this alliance, Proofpoint plans to host its human-centric platform and services on Azure, including its Nexus intelligence technologies, which bring together sophisticated AI models, behaviour analysis, and unparalleled threat intelligence to proactively detect and neutralise risks, by the end of Q2 2025.”

Proofpoint says that by bringing its human-centric platform to Azure and integrating into Microsoft 365, “customers gain more robust, scalable, and proactive solutions to combat modern threats while maintaining the agility needed for today’s dynamic digital environments,” and with its frictionless API integration, organisations can strengthen their Microsoft security while reducing complexity and improving their security posture with:

• Advanced email security without disruptions, delivering comprehensive protection against phishing, business email compromise, ransomware, and other targeted attacks;
• Enhanced data protection across Microsoft 365;
• Lower operational costs and improved efficiency; and
• Protection against emerging data risks from GenAI tools.

“As the cyber landscape continues to evolve at a rapid pace, Proofpoint and Microsoft will continue to support interoperable solutions that further strengthen their mutual customers’ ability to detect and combat cyber risks. Security teams can move from a reactive security stance to a proactive, automated threat defence model with additional layers of defence, response workflow automation and acceleration, and data-driven security decision-making,” the two companies say.

“A key component planned for this collaboration will be incorporating Proofpoint’s Nexus threat intelligence into Microsoft Sentinel via Proofpoint Targeted Attack Protection (TAP) SIEM APIs. This will allow Sentinel customers to seamlessly integrate Proofpoint’s threat intelligence and data into their analytics and extended detection and response (XDR) workflows.

“Security teams will gain richer insights, faster incident response, and greater visibility into emerging threats. Proofpoint on Demand Email Security for Microsoft Sentinel will enable the ingestion of Proofpoint on Demand Email Protection data and activity logs for monitoring email activity, events and threats in an organisation.

“This effort builds on existing collaborations, including Proofpoint Adaptive Email DLP and Microsoft Purview, which provide stronger email data loss prevention, and Proofpoint TAP with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, which extends advanced threat protection across email and endpoints.”

On availability, as part of this alliance, Proofpoint and Microsoft say they expect to begin bringing new integrations and solutions to market in Q2 2025, while Proofpoint API, Proofpoint Adaptive Email DLP with Microsoft Purview, and Proofpoint TAP with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint are available today.

About Proofpoint, Inc.

Proofpoint, Inc. is a leading cybersecurity and compliance company that protects organizations’ greatest assets and biggest risks: their people. With an integrated suite of cloud-based solutions, Proofpoint helps companies around the world stop targeted threats, safeguard their data, and make their users more resilient against cyber-attacks. Leading organizations of all sizes, including 85% of the Fortune 100, rely on Proofpoint for people-centric security and compliance solutions that mitigate their most critical risks across email, the cloud, social media, and the web. More information is available atwww.proofpoint.com.