SAN FRANCISCO, May 14, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Optery today announced that it has been named a winner in the Security / CyberSecurity category of the 2026 Evan Kirstel’s We Love Tech Awards, an annual program celebrating the individuals, organizations, and products reshaping how enterprises work, communicate, secure data, serve customers, and put artificial intelligence into responsible production.
Optery is the leader in enterprise-grade personal data removal and the first company to offer IT teams a completely self-service platform for finding and removing employee PII from the web. The award recognizes Optery for helping organizations reduce cyber and physical risk by finding and removing exposed employee personal data from data broker and people-search sites.
“From the beginning, our focus has been on building technology that gives people and organizations real visibility into exposed personal data and a practical, effective way to remove it,” said Lawrence Gentilello, CEO and founder of Optery. “We’re grateful to the We Love Tech Awards for recognizing the impact of that work in helping prevent cyberattacks and physical threats.”
Optery combines patented search technology with sophisticated opt-out automation to discover and remove dozens more exposed data broker profiles per person than competitors, and is the only service that proves its work with before-and-after screenshots. This approach gives organizations greater visibility into employee exposure and helps reduce the personal data attackers use to carry out social engineering, impersonation, doxxing, and physical threats.
“Optery is operating in one of the most underappreciated parts of the security stack, the personal data exposure that quietly fuels social engineering, account takeover, and fraud. Removing more exposed profiles per person than anyone else, on autopilot, is exactly the kind of practical, scale-ready security work this award category exists to recognize,” said Evan Kirstel, Founder, We Love Tech Awards.
The 2026 We Love Tech Awards recognize honorees across Individual, Organization, and Product nomination types in 15 solution categories spanning artificial intelligence, cloud computing, customer experience, cybersecurity, SaaS, IoT, and more. Almost 400 volunteer judges evaluated entries using the program’s domain-specific scoring framework. The full list of 2026 winners is available at welovetechawards.com.
About Evan Kirstel
Evan Kirstel is one of the most influential voices in B2B technology, with a social reach of more than 550,000 followers across his podcast, YouTube, LinkedIn, X, and Instagram. With years of experience working with Fortune 1000 brands, Evan helps companies harness social media for strategic growth, audience engagement, and social selling. Learn more at evankirstel.com.
About Business Intelligence Group
Business Intelligence Group (BIG) is an independent awards organization that has been recognizing outstanding achievement in business since 2012. Now in its 14th awards season, BIG operates more than 10 annual programs spanning innovation, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, customer service, cloud computing, sustainability, sales and marketing, workplace culture, and women’s leadership.
Unlike popularity contests, BIG programs use professional judging panels and objective scoring benchmarks to identify organizations, products, and individuals making real, measurable impact. Winners receive a complete promotional toolkit – including blockchain-verified credentials, press release support, social media assets, and featured placement across BIG’s global community of more than one million business professionals.
For more information, visit www.bintelligence.com.
About Optery
Optery is the first company to offer a free report with dozens of screenshots showing where your personal information is being posted by hundreds of data brokers online, and the first to offer security teams a completely self-service platform for finding and removing employee personal information from the web. Optery subscription plans automatically remove customers from these sites, clearing your home address, phone number, email, and other personal information from the Internet at scale. The service provides users with a proactive defense against escalating PII-based threats such as phishing and other social engineering attacks, credential compromise, identity fraud, doxing, and harassment. Optery has completed its AICPA SOC 2, Type II security attestation, and distinguishes itself with unparalleled search technology, data removal automation, visual evidence-based before-and-after reporting, data broker coverage, and API integration options. Optery was named a PCMag Editors’ Choice for personal data removal in 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025, and 2026; was ranked No. 12 Fastest-Growing Private Company in the 2026 Inc. Regionals: Pacific list; received Cyber Defense Magazine’s Market Disruptor Award in Digital Risk Protection in 2026; won Cybersecurity Excellence Awards in Human Risk Management, Anti-Phishing, and Attack Surface Management in 2026; and earned a Globee® Award for Cybersecurity, Social Engineering (Best of Category) in 2026. The company also won the Top InfoSec Innovator Award for Most Innovative Anti-Phishing from Cyber Defense Magazine in 2025, was recognized in SiliconANGLE’s TechForward Awards in the Digital Risk Protection Platform category in 2025, received the Fortress Cybersecurity Award for Privacy Enhancing Technologies in 2025, earned Cybersecurity Excellence Awards in Employee Privacy Protection, Attack Surface Management, and Digital Footprint Management in 2024 and 2025, was named Best Service for Attack Surface Management from Cyber Defense Magazine, received Top InfoSec Innovator Award for Attack Surface Management by Cyber Defense Magazine for 2024, and received Fast Company’s Next Big Things in Tech award for security and privacy in 2023. Hundreds of thousands of people and over 1,000 businesses use Optery to prevent attacks and keep their personal information off the Internet. For more information, visit www.optery.com.
Media Contacts
Sara Trammell
Optery for Business
[email protected]
Eliana Starbird
Chief Nominations Officer
Business Intelligence Group
+1 909-529-2737
[email protected]
A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/99b2b79d-3a80-49c3-819e-52ebe5ba36f0
