Forcepoint names Vincent Merlin as Chief Marketing Officer

Forcepoint has appointed Vincent Merlin as Chief Marketing Officer. He joins the cyber security company from Proofpoint.

Merlin will report to Chief Executive Officer Ryan Windham and lead global marketing, including brand, demand generation, product marketing and analyst relations.

He brings two decades of experience in enterprise technology and cyber security marketing. At Proofpoint, he spent 10 years in senior marketing leadership roles and most recently served as Senior Vice President of Global Growth Marketing.

His remit there covered the worldwide marketing organisation and inside sales. He helped the business expand as annual recurring revenue rose from about USD $400 million to more than USD $2.4 billion.

Before joining Proofpoint, Merlin held global and regional marketing leadership roles at AVEVA, Dell EMC and RSA. He also holds an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth and an engineering degree in quantum photonics and optics from Institut d'Optique Graduate School.

The move comes as cyber security vendors sharpen their focus on artificial intelligence and the protection of corporate data used by AI systems. Forcepoint positions its business around AI data security and sells products designed to protect data across cloud, web, networks, email, endpoints and AI environments.

Leadership hire

Windham outlined the company's view of the challenge facing customers as organisations push further into AI deployment.

"Trust used to be a posture, and it is becoming a deliverable for the agentic enterprise: every AI interaction with data governed, every decision recorded, every time. The next decade won't be won by organizations using the most AI. It will be won by those that never lost control of it. Vincent's global go-to-market expertise will help our customers and partners see what command of AI makes possible," said Ryan Windham, Chief Executive Officer of Forcepoint.

Merlin's appointment gives Forcepoint a senior marketing executive with direct experience at another major email and security software provider. Proofpoint is one of the better-known cyber security groups to build a large recurring revenue base, and Merlin's background suggests Forcepoint wants to deepen its commercial reach as competition for AI-related security spending grows.

AI focus

Forcepoint is based in Austin, Texas, and serves customers in more than 150 countries. The company has been positioning its platform around identifying sensitive data as it is created, adapting to changes in risk and applying policy controls across multiple environments.

That pitch reflects a broader shift in the security market. As businesses adopt generative AI tools and embed AI in workflows, software suppliers are increasingly trying to address concerns over how sensitive corporate information is accessed, governed and recorded.

Merlin framed his move in those terms.

"Every technology worth adopting showed up before anyone knew how to secure it. The web, email, the cloud. Companies moved anyway, and the ones that moved early could because somebody made it survivable. Forcepoint is doing that for AI, giving enterprises the confidence to put their best information to work while staying in control. That's why I'm here," said Merlin.