AI adoption fuels sovereign security demand across Asia, says Proofpoint CEO

"We feel we are the best partners for large enterprises to both defend themselves against AI-created threats, as well as providing a platform for securely enabling AI and securing their data," says Sumit Dhawan, Proofpoint CEO.

Proofpoint is expanding its data security capabilities across Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ), as the cybersecurity vendor looks to cater to the growing demand for more sovereign requirements in cybersecurity.

Speaking to CRN Asia exclusively during his visit to the region, Sumit Dhawan, Proofpoint CEO shared that as the region are looking for best in class solutions, they need the right degree of innovation that's suitable for the local markets. This includes sovereignty over offerings, and also making sure there is R&D that's placed to keep innovating on the sovereign offerings in the marketplace.

“That's a posture we've had to take part in just how AI creates a bigger risk for where the information is going, and partly because of the geopolitical situation that exists in the world today. We are here to support the customers in region with sovereign offerings and the team members and the local innovation centers that will fuel the innovation at the pace, speed and directions that local customers want,” said Dhawan.

While businesses in the region continue to focus on their AI deployments, organizations are looking to how they can safeguard data as AI transforms how sensitive information is accessed and used. As such, Proofpoint is ensuring its unified intent-based data security platform can meet increasingly complex local sovereignty and compliance mandates.

“AI creates the need for sovereignty, combined with the geopolitical situation that exists today. We certainly see that happening in parts of Europe, of course, Asia Pacific. And so, this is not just, I would say, characteristics of the local market. However, I do want to say that there are different dynamics from a geopolitical perspective that create the need in a stronger fashion in the local market just so because there is sort of the association between East and West. That's different in the region than maybe even in Europe. So maybe different factors drive the urgency and speed and hard-line requirements in the local region versus something that we see in Europe,” he added.

Dhawan also mentioned that the demand for sovereign solutions has also had an impact on how Proofpoint goes to market. This includes how the vendor treats data and innovates as well as look at the capabilities needed for local compliance requirements.

“We're starting to see in different markets, local compliance requirements come in. And so it definitely is a major factor. We believe that it is not the sole factor, but there are certain horizontal requirements which will be needed for securing the data, protecting the intent and the behavior of AI, making sure humans don't act in a nefarious way that creates fraud. None of those requirements are different when it comes to the behavior of humans and AI working in an enterprise in a secure fashion. But there are certain requirements to make sure that the local laws or compliance requirements or enterprise desire to operate their environment in a sovereign world that dictates additional requirements in the local markets,” he explained.

Expanded capabilities in APJ

The expanded capabilities in the region include local Data Centre Expansions whereby Proofpoint already supports locally delivered Email Data Loss Prevention (DLP), Endpoint Data Loss Prevention (DLP)/Insider Threat Management (ITM) SaaS and Cloud Data Loss Prevention (DLP) capabilities in India, Japan and Australia.

The cybersecurity vendor will now have additional capability delivered via local data centre rolling out later this year in India to include DSPM (Data Security Posture Management), and in Japan to include Cloud DLP and DSPM in Q1 2027.

In Singapore, Proofpoint is also looking to support locally delivered capabilities for Email DLP, Endpoint DLP/ITM SaaS and Cloud DLP with a new local data centre by the end of this year, with DSPM planned for Q2 2027.

“AI is creating two big broad needs. Firstly, AI is creating the need for making sure there are right level of defenses from AI generated threats. In the past, if you think about regions like Southeast Asia, they were thinking of getting some network-based technologies and they were sufficient because most of the threat actor activity was based in the US. But it's not anymore,” Dhawan said.

Dhawan explained that with AI acting and creating threats, largest possible enterprises in major business hubs like Singapore are now at a significant risk. He added that even language is no longer a barrier for threat actors. At the same time, Dhawan pointed out that AI adoption and securely enabling AI is a big objective for businesses globally, and Southeast Asia is an early adopter of AI.

“Speaking to customers in the region, they're sort of architecting their secure enablement of AI today. And we feel we are the best partners for large enterprises to both defend themselves against AI-created threats, as well as providing a platform for securely enabling AI and securing their data. And so, we're seeing great momentum in the business,” he added.