Forcepoint Bets on Customer Outcomes as Data Security Enters the AI Era

In the arms race to secure enterprise data, visibility is no longer the finish line. As AI systems generate, remix, and move sensitive information at machine speed, cybersecurity vendors are under growing pressure to prove that protection actually keeps up with reality. That shift is now reshaping executive leadership inside security companies themselves.

This week, Forcepoint announced the appointment of Eva Klein as Chief Customer Officer, a role that underscores how central customer outcomes have become to modern data security strategies. Klein will run Forcepoint’s global customer success organization, overseeing everything from onboarding and adoption to long-term value realization as customers deploy data protection in AI-driven environments. She reports to Rick Hanson, President of Go-to-Market.

The timing is deliberate. Enterprises are struggling to control sensitive data as it flows across cloud infrastructure, SaaS platforms, endpoints, and increasingly autonomous AI workflows. Agentic AI systems and the rapid expansion of synthetic data are stretching traditional security models past their limits. Knowing where data lives is no longer sufficient; organizations are being judged on whether they can adapt protections in real time as risk, usage, and regulation shift.

Forcepoint’s pitch is that customer success and security effectiveness are now inseparable. Its AI-native Data Security Cloud is designed to identify sensitive data in context, track how it is accessed and shared, and dynamically enforce protection through a single, unified policy framework. The goal is to close what the company sees as a widening “visibility-to-control” gap—especially as enterprises scale AI for everything from internal automation to infrastructure management and developer workflows.

That gap is where Klein’s background comes in. With more than 25 years across customer success, sales, and partner enablement, she has built and scaled global customer organizations at high-growth security and SaaS firms. Most recently, she served as Vice President of Global Customer Success at Mimecast, where she focused on retention, operational scale, and value delivery. Earlier roles included senior leadership positions at HubSpot and Rapid7, guiding customer experience through periods of rapid platform expansion.

For Forcepoint, the hire reflects a broader industry reality: as AI reshapes data flows, security vendors can no longer afford a gap between product promise and customer outcomes.

“Eva joins Forcepoint at a moment when customer success is inseparable from security outcomes,” Hanson said. “Customers need both data visibility and control to help them navigate the many unknowns and complexities of AI operationalization, risk mitigation and compliance. Eva has built global success organizations that help customers realize value in exactly these environments, and her leadership will be critical as we continue to scale.”

Klein, for her part, framed the role less around features and more around resilience as conditions change.

“Customers don’t measure security by features — they measure it by whether it works when risk changes,” she said. “Forcepoint’s approach to data security is grounded in that reality. Helping customers turn insight into confident action, and sustain that over time, is what drew me to the company. Now is the time to hit the ground running with customers and teams worldwide as Forcepoint continues to redefine how data is protected in the AI era.”

In an industry racing to keep pace with autonomous systems and regulatory pressure, Forcepoint’s move signals a clear bet: the next competitive edge in cybersecurity won’t come solely from smarter detection, but from proving—continuously—that protection actually holds when the rules keep changing.