“CyberArk’s Identity Security Platform stood out to the judges for its exceptionally strong response to one of cybersecurity’s most urgent and rapidly evolving challenges: securing identities across human users, machines, and emerging AI agents. The platform demonstrated an impressive combination of technical sophistication, enterprise scalability, and forward-looking innovation, particularly in its approach to privileged access and AI-era identity governance.

“Judges were particularly impressed by the breadth of real-world adoption across highly regulated industries and the solution’s clear understanding of where modern cyber risk is heading. CyberArk’s entry represented not only a powerful cybersecurity solution for today’s cloud environments, but a compelling vision for the future of identity-centric security.”

Annabelle Whittall, The Cloud Awards COO

“The judges at The Cloud Security Awards were particularly impressed by Abnormal AI’s highly innovative approach to security awareness and human risk reduction. Rather than relying on static compliance exercises or generic phishing simulations, the platform demonstrated a far more personalized and adaptive model that delivers role-specific, real-world training experiences tailored to individual users across the organization.

“Judges noted that this approach not only improves administrative efficiency through intelligent automation, but also creates deeper employee engagement and more meaningful behavioral change. By helping organizations better prepare employees for genuine modern attack scenarios, Abnormal AI stood out as a forward-thinking and highly effective advancement in security training and human-centered cyber defense.”

Christopher Bennett, Lead Judge

“Skyhawk Security impressed the judges at The Cloud Security Awards with its highly innovative and deeply integrated use of adversarial AI within modern cloud security operations. Rather than applying AI as a superficial enhancement layer, Skyhawk demonstrated a genuinely AI-native approach that continuously models attacker behavior, simulates real-world attack paths, and prioritizes vulnerabilities based on exploitability and business impact within each customer’s unique cloud environment.

“The judges were particularly struck by the platform’s ability to dramatically reduce alert noise while surfacing the risks that matter most, transforming cloud risk assessment from a volume-driven exercise into an intelligent, context-aware process. By combining adversarial AI, digital twin modeling, and business-aware prioritization into a cohesive platform, Skyhawk Security established itself as a standout leader in the use of AI for cloud security innovation.”

Maneet Bansal, Lead Judge

“Beacon Security impressed the judges at The Cloud Security Awards with its highly innovative approach to one of modern cloud security’s most fundamental challenges: transforming fragmented, high-volume security telemetry into reliable, actionable intelligence. The judges were particularly struck by the platform’s security-first approach to data management, embedding contextual enrichment, normalization, and operational intelligence directly into the data layer itself.

“By combining cloud-scale reliability, AI-ready security data pipelines, and continuous logging posture management, Beacon demonstrated a clear understanding of the operational realities facing modern SOC teams. The platform stood out for redefining security data not as a passive resource, but as an active and strategic component of effective cloud security operations.”

Annabelle Whittall, The Cloud Awards COO

“HCL BigFix Cloud impressed the judges at The Cloud Security Awards with its exceptional scale, operational maturity, and highly integrated approach to enterprise security management. The platform demonstrated a compelling ability to unify vulnerability remediation, endpoint management, compliance, automation, and AI-driven operations within a single control plane, helping organizations close the critical gap between detection and response.

“Judges were particularly struck by the measurable outcomes achieved at enterprise scale, including extremely high remediation success rates, major operational efficiencies, and support for highly complex hybrid environments. By combining resilience, automation, compliance, and intelligent self-healing capabilities into one cohesive system, HCL BigFix Cloud represents a powerful example of what modern security infrastructure should deliver.”

Annabelle Whittall, The Cloud Awards COO

“Axiado stood out at The Cloud Security Awards for its highly innovative and forward-thinking approach to securing modern enterprise and AI infrastructure at the hardware level. The judges were particularly impressed by the company’s Trusted Control/Compute Unit (TCU), which embeds AI-driven security directly into the control plane to deliver continuous, real-time protection against sophisticated threats including firmware attacks, ransomware, and side-channel exploits.

“By moving security from reactive software layers into proactive silicon-level enforcement, Axiado demonstrated a genuinely differentiated vision for the future of cloud and enterprise infrastructure security. Its combination of deep technical innovation, measurable operational impact, and alignment with next-generation AI datacenter environments positioned Axiado as a standout winner in this category.”

Annabelle Whittall, The Cloud Awards COO

“Portnox Cloud impressed the judges at The Cloud Security Awards with its highly effective and forward-looking approach to enterprise security compliance. The platform demonstrated a compelling ability to combine passwordless authentication, continuous device posture assessment, adaptive zero trust enforcement, and automated compliance management within a unified cloud-native architecture.

“Judges were particularly struck by the solution’s focus on measurable operational outcomes, including rapid deployment, reduced administrative overhead, and continuous enforcement of security and compliance policies at enterprise scale. By transforming compliance from a static audit exercise into a dynamic and continuously verified security model, Portnox Cloud stood out as an innovative and highly practical solution for modern enterprise environments.”

Annabelle Whittall, The Cloud Awards COO

“HCL Software have created a very strong product in their BigFix system, and have done well in making this accessible to client needs. HCL have done this by integrating it into their own first-party cloud based service architecture, through good change management for clients moving to their systems, and most impressively through the sheer range of devices and third-party technologies which are supported. This last point in particular goes a long way to improving security by reducing the amount of hardware put outside of security frameworks, and improves take-up by reducing the temptation of users to work outside the security architecture for convenience.”

Stephen Backhouse, Lead Judge

“HCL BigFix impressed the judges at The Cloud Security Awards with its exceptional ability to deliver security, compliance, and endpoint management capabilities at true enterprise scale. The platform demonstrated outstanding operational maturity across vulnerability remediation, patch management, automation, compliance enforcement, and endpoint governance, supporting highly complex global environments with remarkable reliability and efficiency.

“Judges were particularly struck by the scale of deployment, measurable operational outcomes, and the platform’s ability to simplify security operations across vast and diverse infrastructures without compromising visibility or control. Combining enterprise resilience, automation, and proven large-scale effectiveness, HCL BigFix stood out as a clear leader in delivering security solutions for organizations operating at significant scale.”

Annabelle Whittall, The Cloud Awards COO

“Forcepoint Data Security Cloud stood out at The Cloud Security Awards for its highly comprehensive and forward-looking approach to data protection in an AI-driven cloud environment. The judges were particularly impressed by its ability to unify data discovery, classification, risk prioritization, enforcement, and response within a single adaptive platform, helping organizations protect sensitive information wherever it resides, moves, or is used.

“By combining DSPM, DLP, DDR, web and cloud security, and AI-native policy support, Forcepoint demonstrated a strong understanding of the modern data security challenge and the need to move from visibility to action in real time. Its proven customer impact, independent validation, and clear focus on reducing complexity made it a compelling winner in this category.”

Annabelle Whittall, The Cloud Awards COO

“Apiiro stood out at The Cloud Security Awards for its highly innovative and forward-looking approach to risk identification and management within modern cloud-native environments. The judges were particularly impressed by the platform’s architecture-first methodology, combining deep contextual risk analysis, exploitability prioritization, and agentic AI capabilities to help organizations identify and remediate meaningful security risks before they become operational threats.

“Rather than relying on traditional alert-heavy models, Apiiro demonstrated a sophisticated ability to surface actionable risk across complex software supply chains and development ecosystems while reducing noise and accelerating remediation workflows. Its combination of technical depth, preventative security thinking, and enterprise-scale practicality positioned Apiiro as a standout leader in modern risk management and cloud security innovation.”

Annabelle Whittall, The Cloud Awards COO

“AvePoint impressed the judges at The Cloud Security Awards with its highly comprehensive and forward-looking approach to modern information security. The Confidence Platform demonstrated a strong ability to unify data governance, protection, resilience, and AI readiness within a single operational framework, helping organizations manage increasingly complex multicloud and AI-driven environments with confidence.

“Judges were particularly struck by the platform’s emphasis on proactive data governance, immutable recovery, access control, and agentic AI oversight, all delivered with strong enterprise scalability and operational maturity. By addressing the evolving intersection of information security, compliance, and AI governance, AvePoint established itself as a highly credible leader in modern InfoSec.”

Annabelle Whittall, The Cloud Awards COO

“CyberArk stood out at The Cloud Security Awards as an exceptionally strong and robust identity security solution, evolving beyond traditional IAM and SSO capabilities to deliver a truly unified identity security platform. The judges were particularly impressed by its ability to protect human, machine, and emerging AI identities consistently across complex hybrid and multi-cloud environments.

“Its combination of technical innovation, enterprise scalability, and strategic vision demonstrated not only a strong response to today’s identity-centric security challenges, but also a clear readiness for the future evolution of the market. CyberArk distinguished itself as a forward-thinking leader in modern identity security, combining depth, resilience, and adaptability at global enterprise scale.”

Jon Whittall, Judge

“Sublime Security stood out at The Cloud Security Awards for its highly innovative and forward-looking approach to email and communication security in the AI era. The judges were particularly impressed by the platform’s autonomous multi-agent architecture, combining the Autonomous Security Analyst (ASA) and Autonomous Detection Engineer (ADE) to deliver adaptive, organization-specific protection that evolves continuously alongside emerging threats.

“By replacing traditional black-box email security models with transparent, explainable, and rapidly deployable detection engineering, Sublime demonstrated a compelling vision for the future of email defense. Its combination of technical sophistication, measurable operational impact, and strong understanding of modern phishing and social engineering threats positioned Sublime Security as a standout winner in this category.”

Annabelle Whittall, The Cloud Awards COO

“PagerDuty impressed the judges at The Cloud Security Awards with its highly effective and enterprise-grade approach to incident management and operational response coordination. The judges were particularly struck by the platform’s ability to unify incident detection, escalation, response orchestration, and cross-team collaboration within a highly scalable and resilient operational framework.

“By enabling organizations to respond to critical incidents rapidly, reduce operational disruption, and improve visibility across complex environments, PagerDuty demonstrated a clear understanding of the operational realities facing modern enterprises. Its combination of automation, reliability, and mature incident response capabilities positioned PagerDuty as a standout leader in the Best Incident Management Solution category.”

Annabelle Whittall, The Cloud Awards COO

“BMC Software impressed the judges at The Cloud Security Awards with a highly specialized and deeply credible approach to digital forensics and cyber resilience within some of the world’s most mission-critical environments. The judges were particularly struck by the platform’s real-time forensic visibility, advanced privileged activity monitoring, and its ability to support confident ransomware investigation and recovery at enterprise scale.

“By combining modern analytics, automated security operations, and recovery assurance within IBM Z environments, BMC AMI Security demonstrated both technical depth and clear real-world value. The solution stood out for transforming traditionally isolated mainframe security into an intelligence-driven and fully integrated component of modern enterprise cyber defense.”

Annabelle Whittall, The Cloud Awards COO

“Skyhawk Security impressed the judges at The Cloud Security Awards with its highly innovative and adversarial approach to modern vulnerability assessment and cloud risk prioritization. Rather than overwhelming security teams with vast volumes of severity-based findings, the platform demonstrated a sophisticated ability to identify which vulnerabilities are genuinely weaponizable within the context of each customer’s unique cloud environment.

“The judges were particularly struck by Skyhawk’s use of adversarial AI, digital twin modeling, and business-value-driven prioritization to dramatically reduce alert noise while surfacing the risks that matter most. By redefining vulnerability management around exploitability, attack paths, and operational relevance rather than raw finding volume, Skyhawk Security established itself as a standout leader in next-generation cloud risk assessment.”

Annabelle Whittall, The Cloud Awards COO

“VersaONE is the winner of the Network Security category at The Cloud Security Awards for its genuinely differentiated approach to securing modern enterprise networks. By combining SASE, SSE, SD-WAN, and SD-LAN within a single operating system and unified management platform, VersaONE demonstrated a highly cohesive and scalable approach to network security and connectivity.

“The judges were impressed not only by the platform’s technical innovation, but also by its proven real-world effectiveness, including exceptional independent protection scores, strong enterprise adoption, and clear evidence of resilience, visibility, and operational efficiency at scale. VersaONE stood out as a compelling example of how modern network security can be simplified, unified, and strengthened without compromising performance or control.”

Jon Whittall, Judge

“Gcore WAAP impressed the judges at The Cloud Security Awards with its highly comprehensive and modern approach to protecting web applications and internet-facing services at scale. The judges were particularly struck by the platform’s ability to unify web application firewall capabilities, API protection, bot mitigation, DDoS defense, and edge-based security intelligence within a single globally distributed platform.

“Combining strong technical performance with enterprise scalability and operational simplicity, Gcore demonstrated a clear understanding of the evolving web threat landscape and the growing complexity of modern web infrastructure. Its blend of advanced protection, high-performance delivery, and cloud-native architecture positioned Gcore WAAP as a standout winner in the Best Web Security Solution category.”

Annabelle Whittall, The Cloud Awards COO