Dive Brief:

• Mimecast plans to cut about 80 jobs, or 4% of its overall workforce, in a move it said would better align its resources with overall business strategy. A bigger focus on larger enterprise customers is also part of this year's plan, the company said in its fiscal third quarter earnings report Wednesday. 

• The London-based email security provider is continuing to investigate a supply chain attack that compromised its authentication certificates disclosed in January. The firm said the attack was launched by the same threat actors behind the SolarWinds Orion hack. 

• The hack has underscored just how much of a target Office 365 has become, Mimecast CEO Peter Bauer said during the call. Protecting organizations that use Office 365 represents more than half of the company’s business, or more than 20,000 customers.

Dive Insight:

Mimecast is working on remediation with a handful of customers that were targeted by the compromise and has advised its customer base to take precautionary steps to fortify their protections. In January, the attack was disclosed regarding a compromise of authentication certificates that connected certain Mimecast products to their Microsoft 365 tenant. 

"We believe that the steps we are taking to isolate and remediate the identified threat have been effective," Bauer said. "We continue to examine and closely monitor our environment."

The company is expecting a U-shaped recovery over the coming year, according to Bauer, as quarterly revenue growth stabilizes through the next fiscal year. As part of the businesses restructuring, the company named Shahriar Rafimayeri as chief information officer and Michael Paisley as chief security and resilience officer.

Mimecast won significant amounts of new business, with 24 six-figure agreements. This included the company’s largest win, a U.S. healthcare company with 190,000 seats and a former customer of Symantec, Bauer said. Another new win was an European pharmaceutical company that was looking to build more confidence and security around its Office 365 deployment, he said. 

The company’s North American business is showing early, but gradual signs of recovery from COVID-19, according to Rafe Brown, Mimecast's chief financial officer. 

"While there was a slowdown in pipeline generation activity in the month of January, we continue to believe that the North American market is showing early, albeit gradual signs of recovery," Brown said.

"One of Mimecast’s guiding principles has always been to run our business with the long-term in mind," a company spokesman said via email. "Our primary objective is to drive growth by investing back into the business, and we are confident that these actions will help us build the strongest possible foundation for our future."

Revenue rose 18% in the quarter to $129.6 million, compared with $110 million in the year-ago quarter.