OXFORD, U.K. — December 5, 2022 —

Sophos, a global leader in innovating and delivering cybersecurity as a service, today announced that Gerard Allison has joined Sophos as Senior Vice President of Sales for Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA).

“We are very excited Gerard joined Sophos to lead and help accelerate our growth efforts in EMEA, one of the largest regions for the company. Gerard has a deep understanding of the distribution and reseller channel, as well as extensive knowledge of successfully establishing new routes to market. With this impressive track record, Gerard will be a valuable and important Sophos sales leader overseeing EMEA, particularly as we head into 2023 with our new Sophos Managed Detection and Response service,” said Michael Valentine, chief revenue officer at Sophos. “The need for modern cybersecurity solutions, including MDR services from a team of experts trained to spot intrusions ‘hiding in plain sight’ along the attack chain, has become imperative, as indicated in the Sophos 2023 Threat Report. Sophos’ line up of products, services and threat intelligence capabilities, coupled with Gerard’s career expertise in cybersecurity and technology, will ensure our EMEA partners provide customers and prospects with the most advanced security solutions available.”

“Sophos is an industry leader, pioneering the way with a new type of MDR service that every organization can benefit from, so I am thrilled to be joining Sophos at this time and leading the company’s impressive sales team in EMEA,” said Allison. “I am also looking forward to working closely with our extensive partner network in the region to develop new revenue streams and ensure customers have the proper security needed to defend against today’s persistent attackers.”

Allison has more than 30 years of industry experience and is known for his entrepreneurial style and vision, increasing revenue, developing sales programs, training and enablement, building customer and partner engagement, and much more. Allison joins Sophos from Exclusive Networks. He also previously worked at Gigamon and Juniper Networks. He is based in Essex, U.K.

About Sophos

Sophos is a global leader and innovator of advanced security solutions for defeating cyberattacks. The company acquired Secureworks in February 2025, bringing together two pioneers that have redefined the cybersecurity industry with their innovative, native AI-optimized services, technologies and products. Sophos is now the largest pure-play Managed Detection and Response (MDR) provider, supporting more than 28,000 organizations. In addition to MDR and other services, Sophos’ complete portfolio includes industry-leading endpoint, network, email, and cloud security that interoperate and adapt to defend through the Sophos Central platform. Secureworks provides the innovative, market-leading Taegis XDR/MDR, identity threat detection and response (ITDR), next-gen SIEM capabilities, managed risk, and a comprehensive set of advisory services. Sophos sells all these solutions through reseller partners, Managed Service Providers (MSPs) and Managed Security Service Providers (MSSPs) worldwide, defending more than 600,000 organizations worldwide from phishing, ransomware, data theft, other every day and state-sponsored cybercrimes. The solutions are powered by historical and real-time threat intelligence from Sophos X-Ops and the newly added Counter Threat Unit (CTU). Sophos is headquartered in Oxford, U.K. More information is available at www.sophos.com.