Tech Ascension Awards Announces 2026 Cybersecurity Award Winners
- Aug 4
- 7 min read
The Tech Ascension Awards announced the winners of its 2026 Cybersecurity Awards, recognizing the companies and solutions advancing the future of artificial intelligence security, cloud protection, mobile application security, endpoint management, identity security, network defense, email protection, application security, security operations, and more.
This year’s winners reflect a cybersecurity landscape being reshaped by autonomous AI agents, increasingly sophisticated identity-based attacks, expanding cloud environments, software supply chain risks, and the growing need for security teams to detect and respond to threats with greater speed and precision.
The 2026 Cybersecurity Awards honor organizations helping enterprises, government agencies, security teams, developers, and technology leaders address critical security challenges across modern digital environments. Winners were selected based on innovation, competitive differentiation, market impact, customer adoption, organizational reach, and their ability to deliver measurable security and business outcomes.
2026 Cybersecurity Award Winners
Most Innovative Security Solution
Filigran, The XTM Platform
Filigran was recognized for its eXtended Threat Management Platform, an open and AI-native ecosystem that unifies threat intelligence, adversarial exposure validation, and risk governance. The platform combines OpenCTI, OpenAEV, and the forthcoming OpenGRC solution to help organizations understand emerging threats, test their defenses against realistic attacks, and continuously manage exposure from a single environment. At the center of the platform is XTM One, an agentic AI orchestration layer that connects threat intelligence with automated validation, investigation, and response workflows. Filigran stood out for replacing fragmented and reactive security processes with a continuous, threat-driven approach to exposure management. Its open-core architecture, support for more than 300 integrations, adherence to STIX and TAXII standards, and community of more than 6,000 members provide organizations with flexibility while reducing dependence on proprietary security ecosystems. Filigran reports that the platform can reduce response times by up to 95%, accelerate threat detection and response by up to 80%, reduce manual threat-hunting work by 50%, and compress intelligence enrichment from days to seconds. These capabilities demonstrated Filigran’s ability to transform disconnected security data into coordinated and measurable defensive action.
Best AI / ML Powered Solution
Rubrik, Rubrik Agent Cloud
Rubrik was recognized for Rubrik Agent Cloud for introducing a security and recovery platform designed specifically for the risks created by autonomous AI agents. The platform combines real-time AI governance with Rubrik Agent Rewind, which enables organizations to reverse destructive agent actions using isolated, immutable copies of data and identity information. Rubrik Agent Cloud also features the Semantic AI Governance Engine, a domain-specific small language model that interprets the intent behind natural-language policies, identifies violations, and can require human approval before dangerous operations reach production systems. The solution stood out for moving beyond AI monitoring to provide active intervention, recovery, and centralized governance across platforms including Microsoft Copilot Studio, Amazon Bedrock, Google Gemini, and Anthropic Claude. By helping organizations deploy AI agents faster while maintaining control and recoverability, Rubrik demonstrated a practical framework for enterprise AI resilience.
Best Cloud Security Solution
Onebrief
Onebrief was recognized for delivering a secure, cloud-native command platform capable of operating inside some of the most sensitive government and defense environments. Authorized for IL5 and IL6 Top Secret environments, Onebrief has undergone authenticated vulnerability scanning, static and dynamic application security testing, independent cybersecurity review, and formal authorization processes. The platform is also designed to operate in expeditionary and low-bandwidth conditions where reliable infrastructure cannot be assumed. Onebrief stood out for combining a rigorous cloud security architecture with measurable operational impact. Users have reported a 90% reduction in planning cycle time, a 50% increase in information accuracy, and the elimination of approximately 20 hours of redundant weekly work per planning team. Its adoption across major U.S. operational plans and Geographic Combatant Commands further demonstrated its ability to deliver secure cloud collaboration at mission-critical scale.
Best Mobile Security Solution
Guardsquare, Guardsquare Platform
Guardsquare was honored for its mobile-first security platform, which protects Android and iOS applications throughout the full software development and deployment lifecycle. The Guardsquare Platform combines AppSweep for mobile application security testing, DexGuard and iXGuard for code hardening and runtime protection, ThreatCast for post-release threat monitoring, and App Attestation for application integrity and mobile API security. The platform stood out because it protects the application itself against reverse engineering, tampering, malware, cloning, fraud, API abuse, and threats involving modified or non-genuine applications. Its guided implementation process also allows development teams to deploy advanced protections without slowing release schedules or requiring extensive in-house mobile security expertise. With more than 1,000 customers worldwide, Guardsquare demonstrated the technical depth, customer adoption, and full-lifecycle coverage required to protect mobile applications that increasingly support sensitive data, transactions, intellectual property, and revenue.
Best Endpoint Security Solution
Ivanti, Ivanti Autonomous Patch Management
Ivanti was recognized for Ivanti Autonomous Patch Management for transforming endpoint vulnerability remediation into a continuous, risk-based, and increasingly autonomous process. The cloud-native solution maintains a unified system of record for endpoint inventory, vulnerabilities, patch status, risk, and compliance across Windows, macOS, Linux, and third-party applications. Its Vulnerability Risk Rating technology combines exploitability intelligence, active threat data, and asset context to help organizations prioritize vulnerabilities based on real-world business risk rather than severity scores alone. Ivanti also stood out for connecting discovery, prioritization, deployment, and verification through governed automation and predictive remediation workflows.
Best Identity Management Solution
Entro Security, Entro Platform
Entro Security was recognized for addressing one of the fastest-growing areas of enterprise identity risk: AI agents, service accounts, API keys, tokens, and other non-human identities. The Entro Platform continuously discovers and maps non-human identities and secrets across cloud and on-premises systems, code repositories, CI/CD pipelines, secrets vaults, collaboration platforms, and SaaS applications. Its proprietary Non-Human Identity Detection and Response engine builds a contextual identity graph connecting each identity and credential to its actual usage, permissions, risk exposure, and accountable human owner. Entro stood out for going beyond discovery by providing behavioral analysis, real-time anomaly detection, automated credential rotation, ownership attestation, permission right-sizing, and policy enforcement for AI agent actions and tool access. With customers including GSK, Paramount, and Dropbox, as well as integrations and partnerships involving AWS and Wiz, Entro demonstrated its ability to bring accountability and governance to identity environments that traditional human-focused IAM platforms were not designed to manage.
Best Network Security Solution
FireMon, FireMon Security and Policy Manager Platform with Insights 2.0
FireMon was honored for delivering a centralized network security control plane that helps organizations govern policies consistently across firewalls, cloud security controls, Zero Trust systems, and microsegmentation platforms. Insights 2.0 adds AI-powered operational intelligence that identifies systemic policy risk, benchmarks performance, analyzes trends, and prioritizes remediation across complex hybrid environments. The platform supports more than 100 security technologies and has been deployed in environments containing more than 20,000 managed devices. FireMon stood out for pairing enterprise-scale visibility with measurable improvements in governance, compliance, and operational efficiency. One financial services organization reduced audit preparation from several months to one week and cut firewall rule deployment time by 90% across more than 300 firewalls. Other customers reported a 97% reduction in rule-review time, a 75% reduction in overall change-process time, and an 83% reduction in compliance audit preparation. These results demonstrated FireMon’s ability to turn fragmented policy management into an automated and continuously governed security function.
Best Email Security Solution
Barracuda Networks, Barracuda Integrated Email Protection
Barracuda Networks was recognized for Barracuda Integrated Email Protection for providing continuous, AI-driven defense across the entire email attack lifecycle. Designed for Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace environments, the solution uses behavioral AI, natural language processing, social graph analysis, multilingual detection, and real-time URL inspection to identify phishing, business email compromise, account takeover, impersonation, and AI-assisted social engineering. Unlike point-in-time email filters, Barracuda continues evaluating messages after delivery and can automatically remove malicious emails when URLs or other threat indicators change. The solution stood out for combining advanced detection with rapid API-based deployment and automated tenant-wide remediation. Barracuda reports that its AI-powered detection catches 70% more business email compromise attempts than standard filters. At BNBuilders, the technology helped detect and remove more than 12,000 malicious emails, reduce inbox clutter by 50%, eliminate manual cleanup during active incidents, and consolidate daily security workflows from six interfaces into one.
Best Application Security Solution
Mend.io, Mend AppSec
Mend.io was recognized for Mend AppSec, an AI-native application security platform that unifies proprietary code security, open-source dependency protection, container security, software supply chain security, and AI application security within a single developer workflow. The platform combines high-precision static application security testing, reachability-based software composition analysis, contextual prioritization, automated dependency management, and AI-assisted remediation. Mend AppSec also extends protection to AI-generated code, large language models, AI agents, retrieval-augmented generation pipelines, and system prompts, including emerging risks such as prompt injection and insecure prompt logic. The solution stood out for helping teams prioritize exploitable vulnerabilities rather than overwhelming developers with undifferentiated findings. Organizations following Mend.io integration and remediation practices reduced average remediation time from 271 days to 70 days and increased remediation rates from 13% to 40%.
Best SecOps Solution
ESET, ESET Threat Intelligence
ESET was honored for ESET Threat Intelligence for converting global cybersecurity research and telemetry into curated, actionable intelligence that security operations teams can use to identify and respond to emerging threats. Supported by 11 research and development centers and hundreds of cybersecurity experts, the platform analyzes more than 2.5 billion URLs, 60 million metadata records, and 750,000 suspicious samples each day. This research supports proprietary intelligence feeds, advanced persistent threat reporting, and specialized eCrime Reports focused on ransomware, infostealers, affiliate activity, attack chains, and financially motivated cybercrime. ESET Threat Intelligence also incorporates ESET AI Advisor, a generative AI assistant that helps analysts interpret attacker behavior, explain malware, generate indicators of compromise, and prioritize response actions. The solution stood out for reducing intelligence noise, connecting related campaigns and tactics, and providing visibility into regions often overlooked by other providers. A reported 100% customer retention rate further demonstrated the platform’s operational value and customer impact.
Recognizing Excellence in Cybersecurity Innovation
As cyber threats become faster, more automated, and increasingly focused on identities, applications, AI systems, and cloud infrastructure, organizations need security technology that can improve visibility, prevention, response, and resilience without creating additional operational complexity.
The 2026 Cybersecurity Tech Ascension Award winners exemplify how innovative companies are applying artificial intelligence, automation, threat intelligence, identity correlation, continuous monitoring, and risk-based remediation to solve some of the most urgent challenges facing modern security teams.
Learn more about other Tech Ascension Awards here.
