Takeaways
- The agentic workspace has moved rapidly from an emerging concept to an operating reality, increasing risk across people, data, and AI agents.
- AI “firsts” and frontier models are accelerating vulnerability discovery and exploitation, making intent-based protection, threat intelligence, and strong data security more important than ever.
- Proofpoint’s Q2 FY26 momentum reflects growing customer demand for unified protection across people, data, and AI.
Customer-Fueled Business Momentum
Proofpoint entered the second half of FY26 with record momentum, reflecting the growing trust customers place in us to secure their people, data, and AI.
In the second quarter, ending in June, Proofpoint delivered very strong performance and continued to deepen its role as a strategic security partner to customers around the world.
Our Q2 business highlights included:
- Strong double-digit ARR growth year over year
- 96% gross retention
- More than 650 new MSP partners transacting on the Proofpoint 365 Total Protection platform
Proofpoint also earned seven product and people recognitions across global CRN and CybersecAsia programs, spanning AI-powered cybersecurity, data management and protection, web and email security, cybersecurity innovation, channel leadership, and security vendor excellence.
Together, these results reflect the durability of our business and the relevance of our strategy. Customers increasingly want fewer disconnected tools and a more secure, unified way to protect people, data, and AI – and Proofpoint is delivering both.
We are encouraged by how customers are partnering with Proofpoint to secure their agentic workspaces, defend against AI-enabled attacks, and bring their AI security and data security strategies together.
Less than a year ago, the agentic workspace was still an emerging idea. At Proofpoint Protect in Nashville in September 2025, we described a future in which people would increasingly work alongside AI assistants and agents across email, collaboration platforms, and enterprise data.
As with most things involving AI, that future arrived faster than expected. We have seen frontier AI models accelerate vulnerability discovery and exploitation. We have seen the first AI-assisted zero-day attacks. And we have seen the risks across people, data, and AI become increasingly connected.
Fortunately for our customers, Proofpoint was already innovating and building solutions for this “future” agentic workspace.
Defending Against AI-Enabled Attacks
This quarter, we introduced Proofpoint Active Exploits Protection, which uses real-world attacker activity to identify actively exploited vulnerabilities and help customers prioritize remediation. That matters because fewer than 6% of disclosed vulnerabilities are ever exploited in the wild.
We also introduced the Core Email Protection API within the Threat Protection Workbench, extending our defense-in-depth architecture for Microsoft 365. By bringing together pre-delivery prevention, post-delivery remediation, and click-time protection across email, browsers, and collaboration tools, the solution helps customers detect and disrupt AI-driven attacks faster. It also gives security teams clearer attack context, automates the review of user-reported emails, and shares telemetry across the broader security ecosystem.
And today, Proofpoint researchers are announcing that they uncovered a novel attack exploiting a previously unknown vulnerability in Zimbra email software. The attack could be triggered simply by opening an email—without clicking a link or opening an attachment—and likely included AI-assisted elements. Proofpoint’s Threat Research team and Authority Engine detected the threat, alerted the NSA and FBI, and worked closely with government partners to publish findings that will help the broader security community defend against this sophisticated campaign.
Together, these developments reinforce a core Proofpoint belief: as attacks become faster, more automated, and harder to recognize, securing the agentic workspace requires understanding intent across people and agents, protecting the data they access, and applying real-world intelligence and protection at machine speed.
AI Security and Data Security Are Inseparable
AI agents depend on enterprise data to be effective. As they retrieve, generate, and share more of it, organizations need to know where sensitive data resides, who and what can access it, and how it is being used.
Proofpoint brings together data loss prevention, data security posture management, insider threat management, AI governance, and behavioral intelligence to protect data across cloud, SaaS, endpoint, communications, and AI environments.
At the Proofpoint AI Security Summit, we introduced intent-based guardrails for enterprise AI agents, stronger controls for shadow AI and sensitive data, and active exploit prevention that turns real-time attacker activity into automated protection.
Looking Ahead to Proofpoint Protect
Proofpoint’s momentum reflects our ability to help customers navigate this change with an integrated platform, differentiated intelligence, and protection built for how work is evolving.
Given how much has changed in the past several months, imagine what we will have to discuss in another two. I encourage you to join us at Proofpoint Protect 2026, September 21-23 in San Diego, where customers, partners, security leaders, and researchers will come together to explore and prepare for what comes next.