Global cybersecurity leader Forcepoint today announced John Sorensen has joined the company as Vice President of Global Sales Strategy and Execution. Sorensen will report to Chief Revenue Officer Kevin Isaac.
In this role, Sorensen will head up a new department to help Forcepoint scale and achieve its growth targets through an enterprise-class customer experience. Sorensen will be part of the team taking Forcepoint’s Converged Security Platform to CISOs and security professionals who requireconsolidated, cloud-based security solutions in a deployment-agnostic delivery model.
“Forcepoint is uniquely positioned to enable enterprise organizations to take advantage of the value offered by digital transformation, without compromising security. Bringing our converged systems to companies across the globe requires world-class execution around projects, business development, and transformational strategy,” said Kevin Isaac, CRO Forcepoint. “John represents a unique and crucial add-on to the global sales team, and with his sales leadership and deep understanding of the channel ecosystem including system integrators, I look forward to Forcepoint’s continued growth and category-disruptive brand position in the cybersecurity market.”
Sorensen joins Forcepoint with 35 years’ experience in the information technology industry. Most recently, he has undertaken various consultative appointments in cybersecurity firms to develop and enhance go-to-market strategies. Prior to this, Sorensen held multiple executive-level roles at Symantec, including Global SVP of Sales where he was responsible for worldwide sales strategy, business generation and profitability. Additionally, he was responsible for global customer retention and acquisition both direct and via partners including GSIs. Before joining Symantec in 2005, Sorensen held leadership positions at organizations including RSA Security and McAfee.
“Forcepoint’s philosophy of putting users and data at the center of security architectures is very different to legacy cybersecurity firms, and offers huge potential to organizations looking to unlock value from today’s complex IT environments,” said Sorensen. “My new team will explore multiple strategies to help deliver business success for our customers, whether that is assisting in the evolution of our frictionless channel partner program, building on the recent investments in the technology partner ecosystem, or better enabling our sales teams to deliver our converged capabilities.”
In April, Forcepoint launched its redesigned partner ecosystem with strategic investments across channel, global systems integrators (GSIs) and technology alliances. In addition, Forcepoint is investing in the creation of a human-centric technology partner ecosystem which enables customers to achieve their digital transformation outcomes. These alliances span areas including public cloud, data classification, identity and access management, as well as identity-as-a-service tools, collaboration, HR, IT service management, workflows, incident response and other mission-critical business applications. Inaugural technology alliances include AWS, IBM Security, Microsoft, Citrix, Boldon James, Ping Identity, and Seclore.
Sorensen’s appointment is the latest in a series of strategic hires including the Q1 appointments of Oni Chakravartti as Global Vice President, Channel Sales and Manolo Gonzalez as Vice President, Ecosystem Business Development, who joined from Optiv and Cloudlock respectively. In addition, Nick Craig has joined Forcepoint as Vice President Americas Sales, from CA Technologies.
About Forcepoint
Forcepoint is the global human-centric cybersecurity company transforming the digital enterprise by continuously adapting security response to the dynamic risk posed by the behavior of individual users and machines. Forcepoint’s solutions delivers risk-adaptive protection to continuously ensure trusted use of data and systems. Based in Austin, Texas, Forcepoint protects users and data for thousands of enterprise and government customers in more than 150 countries. For more about Forcepoint, visit www.forcepoint.com.
