Forcepoint has appointed Vincent Merlin as its new Chief Marketing Officer, strengthening its global marketing leadership as the company expands its focus on AI data security and helps enterprises maintain control over how AI interacts with sensitive information.
Reporting to CEO Ryan Windham, Merlin will oversee global marketing across brand strategy, demand generation, product marketing and analyst relations. His role will support Forcepoint’s efforts to define the AI data security category and help organisations use AI while keeping their data governed and protected.
“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,” said Windham. “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.”
Merlin joins Forcepoint after 10 years at Proofpoint, where he held several senior marketing positions. Most recently, he served as Senior Vice President of Global Growth Marketing, overseeing the worldwide marketing organisation and inside sales. During his tenure, he helped build the company’s global growth engine and support its AI-led transformation as annual recurring revenue grew from about $400 million to more than $2.4 billion.
Before Proofpoint, Merlin held global and regional marketing leadership roles at AVEVA, Dell EMC and RSA.
He 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.
“Every technology worth adopting showed up before anyone knew how to secure it. The web, email, the cloud,” said Merlin. “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.”
Merlin will also join Forcepoint executives, customers and industry leaders at Forcepoint AWARE: Decoding Agentic AI Security, a free virtual conference scheduled for September 16, 2026.
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