LAS VEGAS, Aug. 04, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — The Cybersecurity Excellence Awards today announced the winners of the 2026 Community Choice Award, selected through 79,455 votes cast during the awards season. AI security ranked among the highest-voted award categories this season. The results arrive during Black Hat USA week, where AI risk is also among the most prominent themes on the conference agenda.
Community Choice is the only Cybersecurity Excellence Awards recognition determined directly by community voting. It complements the jury awards by recognizing the visible support nominees have earned across the wider cybersecurity community.
View all 2026 Community Choice Award winners
“Congratulations to every 2026 Community Choice Award winner, and thank you to all the nominees and community members who participated,” said Holger Schulze, founder and CEO of Cybersecurity Insiders, which presents the Cybersecurity Excellence Awards. “The strongest voting support centered on security operations, exposure management, and AI security. In 2024, AI security was a single award category. In 2026 it spans ten, as AI reaches into access, data protection, detection, and response, with different vendors solving each one.”
Survey Findings and Research Priorities
The same areas that drew the most votes across product and service categories also surfaced as top priorities in Cybersecurity Insiders survey research this year: expanding operational capacity to detect and respond at the speed and scale of modern threats, reducing exploitable risk before attackers can act, and establishing controls as AI reaches more enterprise data, applications, identities, and workflows.
Cybersecurity Insiders will continue examining these shifts through upcoming research into how AI is reshaping security domains, where enterprise defenses are falling behind, and what organizations are doing to close the resulting gaps.
Explore recent Cybersecurity Insiders research
About the Cybersecurity Excellence Awards and Cybersecurity Insiders
For more than a decade, the Cybersecurity Excellence Awards have recognized the companies, products, and professionals helping to advance cybersecurity. The program combines expert jury evaluation with Community Choice recognition, providing distinct ways to recognize demonstrated achievement and industry support.
The awards are presented by Cybersecurity Insiders, an independent research and media platform serving a global community of more than 600,000 cybersecurity professionals, including CISOs and security leaders. Through original research, industry analysis, CISO guides, webinars, and independent solution reviews, Cybersecurity Insiders helps security leaders understand emerging risks, evaluate changing priorities, and make more informed strategic decisions.
Learn more at https://cybersecurity-excellence-awards.com/ and https://www.cybersecurity-insiders.com/
Contact
Founder and CEO
Holger Schulze
Cybersecurity Insiders
[email protected]
A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/cf720e53-5203-487a-8cb5-22a55ff2f601
