How A Mid-Market Distributor Broke Free From Cisco IronPort - Without A Risky Email Security Cutover
Proofpoint, Thursday, February 12th, 2026
Email security failures rarely show up as a single dramatic breach. More often, they surface as death by a thousand cuts: phishing emails slipping through, account takeovers that take days to clean up, business tools getting blocked 'just in case,' and a security team stretched to the breaking point.
That was exactly the position a mid-market, employee-owned U.S. distributor found itself in last year.
They were doing many things right:
- Microsoft 365 for email
- long-standing secure email gateway (SEG) from Cisco IronPort
- lean but capable security team
- CIO focused on modernization and responsible AI adoption
Yet despite all of this, phishing emails kept getting through-and the real cost didn't show up on an invoice.