It’s easy to assume existing tools are sufficient, but evolving threats demand a more integrated approach.
Threat actors are exploiting the expanding digital workspace, targeting employees across email, collaboration apps, cloud platforms and messaging channels. With more tools, more users and more communication vectors, the attack surface has never been broader and more human.
While cybersecurity budgets remain under pressure, the need to reduce risk, optimize operations and justify spend continues to intensify. That’s why a new, independently conducted Economic Value Validation Report from ESG couldn’t have come at a better time.
This respected third-party research firm evaluated Proofpoint Prime Threat Protection without bias. And its report is packed with insights that are drawn from customer deployments as well as backed by analyst-driven financial modeling. There’s no cherry-picking. And no vendor spin.
The verdict? It shows that Proofpoint Prime delivers real results and a massive ROI. The report also presents a compelling case for why a modern, human-centric defense strategy is no longer optional.
Organizations realized a 237% ROI within 3 years
ESG’s rigorous research uncovered that organizations that deploy Proofpoint Prime experienced a 237% return on their investment within three years. That means for every dollar spent, organizations got more than three dollars back in value. And this isn’t just theoretical. It's based on real customer deployments, outcomes and quantifiable business impacts.
Among the standout results within the report:
- $6.1 million from alleviating cyber risks. Customers drastically reduced the likelihood of a major breach and the associated costs by deploying Prime’s integrated, multichannel protection.
- More than $5.07 million in savings from optimizing IT. Prime improved operational efficiency by automating tasks, simplifying workflows and generating fewer triage-worthy alerts. As a result, this freed up valuable security team resources.
- 40% lower total cost of ownership (TCO). When organizations consolidate critical capabilities into a single platform like Prime, they can eliminate their redundant spend on fragmented tools.
Why Prime? It’s not just the tech—it’s the strategy
The power of Prime lies in its holistic, integrated approach to defending against human-centric threats.
ESG found that many organizations use multiple standalone tools for email security, impersonation protection, collaboration and messaging protection, account takeover detection, threat response and security awareness training. Despite all these tools, they still face gaps, inefficiencies and rising costs.
Proofpoint Prime combines all these capabilities. With Prime, you get a single strategic solution that provides:
- Multichannel defense. Employees are protected across email, messaging apps, browsers, collaboration tools, social platforms and cloud apps.
- Multistage attack protection. It detects and remediates compromised accounts for both employees and suppliers.
- Impersonation protection. Your trusted domains are protected from impersonation abuse with email authentication and takedown services.
- Risk-based guidance and education. Employees get personalized, risk-based guidance and education to build their resilience to multichannel and multistage attacks.
- Centralized investigation and response. Teams get a unified, contextual view of multichannel and multistage attacks. This means that SecOps investigations are streamlined, and threat response is faster.
- Actionable human risk insights. It delivers AI-driven risk insights for both user behavior and threat activities. This means your policies can be enforced in real-time and users get dynamic guidance about threats as they happen.
A consolidation story that pays off.
In virtually every ESG scenario, customers reported that with Prime they were able to get rid of redundant tools and simplify their security stacks. As a result, they saw their operational costs, licensing fees and alert fatigue all go down in a measurable way.
One customer reported that they replaced three different vendors with Prime. Another highlighted how they saw faster time-to-detection and time-to-response. This enabled them to contain threats earlier while minimizing user impact and operational disruption.
Prime isn’t just about better security. It’s about doing more with less—a theme that resonates now more than ever.
Third-party validation you can count on
What makes this report stand out is ESG’s independence. These are not Proofpoint claims; they’re analyst-verified insights. What’s more, these insights are grounded in detailed customer interviews, financial modeling and real-world use cases. If you need hard proof to take to your CIO or procurement lead, this is it.
How to use this report
It doesn’t matter if you’re a security leader, buyer or champion inside your organization. The ESG report helps you to:
- Justify your investment in human-centric threat protection with validated ROI and cost savings
- Quantify improvements in breach likelihood, user behavior and SOC productivity
- Align with executive priorities, such as risk reduction, operational efficiency and vendor consolidation
With human-centric attacks rising and traditional tools falling short, now is the time to reassess your strategy. The ESG report shows how a single, integrated solution can help. It lays out how a single solution can help you reduce your risk, improve productivity and deliver measurable financial value.
Get the ESG report
See for yourself how Proofpoint Prime can help your organization simplify its defenses and protect what matters most—your people. Download the ESG Economic Validation Report now.
