For Australian organisations, cybersecurity is no longer only about stopping threats, but also about understanding where security data is processed, where it resides, and whether security controls align with increasingly stringent data privacy and regulatory expectations.
Despite that growing complexity, one thing hasn't changed. Proofpoint's 2026 AI and Human Risk Landscape report found that email remains the most common threat vector for Australian organisations, cited by 53% of local security professionals — ahead of SaaS and cloud applications (46%), AI assistants or agents (39%), and social and messaging platforms (37%). AI is broadening where organisations need to pay attention, but it hasn't dethroned the inbox as the primary point of exposure.
For security teams, this means protecting email, preventing data loss, and meeting data residency requirements can no longer be treated as separate challenges.
From 16 October 2026, Proofpoint is expanding the capabilities available through its Australian data centre to include Core Email Protection API and Adaptive Email Data Loss Prevention (AEDLP). This brings these capabilities into the same Australian data centre footprint alongside Proofpoint’s existing locally available Email DLP, Insider Threat Management (ITM), and Cloud DLP protection.
The expansion provides greater choice in how organisations in Australia can deploy email security and data loss prevention, while supporting local data processing and residency requirements.
Core Email Protection API: adding protection in 48 hours
Core Email Protection API takes an API-based approach to email security, integrating natively with Microsoft 365 rather than requiring organisations to reroute their mail through a traditional secure email gateway.
This simplifies deployment by allowing organisations to add defence-in-depth protection alongside their existing native cloud security controls, without requiring an MX record change or altering existing mail flow.
Powered by Proofpoint Nexus AI, the API integration provides deep visibility into cloud email environments—protecting against lateral phishing, account takeovers (ATO), and advanced threats like Business Email Compromise (BEC) and QR code phishing. Because it monitors internal communication flows, it also gives security teams early indicators of anomalous user behaviour and data movement.
With Core Email Protection API now available through Proofpoint's Australian data centre, organisations can deploy this API-native approach while keeping the relevant security data processing within the Australian environment.
Why it is essential to add protection on top of Microsoft 365
While native Microsoft 365 security controls offer a baseline layer of defence, they miss 27% of what Proofpoint catches, particularly for modern cyberattacks: advanced Business Email Compromise (BEC), vendor supply chain compromise, and zero-day QR code phishing, which frequently bypass standard filters in Microsoft365.
Adding Proofpoint Core Email Protection API creates a specialised, multi-layered defence directly within the Microsoft environment:
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Defence-in-Depth against BEC & Financial Fraud: Microsoft’s native controls excel at broad spam and known malware filtering, but Proofpoint’s Nexus AI models analyse user context, social graphs, and dynamic URL behaviours to block subtle BEC and executive impersonation attempts before they reach the inbox.
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Internal & Lateral Threat Visibility: External email gateways only inspect inbound and outbound traffic. By connecting directly via API, Proofpoint continuously monitors internal-to-internal communications, quickly flagging lateral phishing from compromised internal accounts or misdirected sensitive data.
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Zero Mail-Flow Interruption: Because it operates via API integration, security teams get enterprise-grade threat protection without the complexity of changing MX records or disrupting Microsoft's native mail routing.
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Real-Time Remediation: The API approach allows automated, post-delivery threat removal across all user inboxes in seconds when a newly identified threat emerges, supplementing Microsoft’s native response capabilities.
Adaptive Email DLP: misdirected email & email exfiltration managed beyond rules
Traditional DLP controls are effective at identifying known types of sensitive information, but data loss does not always follow a predictable pattern. An employee may accidentally send a confidential document to the wrong recipient, forward sensitive information to a personal account, or communicate through unusual channels prior to departing the company.
Based on the latest data from The OAIC, the top causes of human error breaches in Australia remain to be PI (Personal Information) sent to the wrong recipient via email (44%).
Adaptive Email DLP (AEDLP) utilises Proofpoint’s Knowledge Graph to continuously map normal communication patterns, context and working relationships across historical email communications. Rather than relying solely on static, rules-based inspection, AEDLP identifies anomalies in real time—delivering in-the-moment, contextual warning nudges directly to users so they can correct mistakes (such as misdirected emails or misattached files) before data leaves the organisation.
With AEDLP now available from Proofpoint's Australian data centre, organisations can bring this behavioural AI approach to data loss prevention while supporting their local data residency requirements.
Protecting people and data in an AI-driven environment
AI is reshaping the risk landscape — how fast attacks move, how convincing they look, how easily sensitive data can leave an organisation without anyone intending harm. What it hasn't changed is the fundamentals: knowing where your data lives, understanding how people actually work and communicate, and closing the everyday gaps that cause most incidents in the first place. Those basics matter more, not less, in an AI-driven environment.
That's arguably the opportunity in front of security teams right now. Rather than treating AI as a reason to chase entirely new tooling, it's a prompt to get the fundamentals genuinely right — visibility into data movement, protection that understands normal behaviour, and infrastructure that meets local regulatory expectations by design. Get those right, and the more advanced AI-era capabilities become an extension of a solid foundation rather than a patch over one that was never quite there.
The expansion of Core Email Protection API and AEDLP to our Australian data centre is one more step in a longer commitment: to keep building the local infrastructure, the local support, and the local expertise that Australian security teams need as this landscape keeps shifting. We know this isn't a problem any organisation solves once and moves on from — it's an ongoing journey, and one we intend to walk alongside Australian businesses for the long haul. Protect people, defend data, get the basics right, and keep showing up for the organisations doing that hard work every day. That's the commitment behind everything we're building here.