Sophos has confirmed job cuts impacting 10% of its global workforce amid a “challenging and uncertain” macro environment.

According to TechCrunch, Sophos is letting go of 450 Sophos employees. Thoma Bravo acquired the U.K.-based company for nearly $4 billion in March 2020.

“This is difficult news for the entire Sophos organization,” Sophos said in an email when asked about the job cuts. “We are especially sorry to those who will be leaving.”

Sophos said it’s taking these steps for two main reasons. The first is to ensure it achieves the “optimal balance of growth and profitability” to support its long-term success. This is particularly important “in the midst of a challenging and uncertain macro environment.”

The second is to allocate its investments to be a “market leader in delivering cybersecurity as a service.”

Job Cuts ‘Necessary’ for Strategic Vision

“While these changes are difficult, we believe they are necessary to advance our strategic vision to be a leading global innovator and provider of cybersecurity as a service, with managed detection and response (MDR) at its core,” Sophos said. “We view MDR as a catalyst not only to expand our managed services business, which is now more than $175 million and growing at over 50% per year, but also to provide the ideal platform to continue to grow and enhance our $1 billion-plus product portfolio across endpoint, network, email and cloud security.”  

Sophos said cyberattacks aren’t slowing down, as evidenced by the massive number of new cyber threats its threat intelligence experts process daily. And organizations need to remain more vigilant than ever.

“We do important work at Sophos, protecting over 530,000 organizations worldwide,” the company said. “We are grateful for the contributions of all our team members, past and present, in building Sophos into a cybersecurity leader, and in helping to keep the world safe from the evils of cybercrime.”