Cyber Security Advocate of the Year.
Most of the people who decide whether an organisation gets breached never read a threat report. This category honours the people who reach them anyway, and the panel scores them on who they brought along, not how loudly they spoke.
The 2026 Advocate of the Year
Jim West was named Cyber Security Advocate of the Year in 2026, recognised for the long, patient work of putting the case for security in front of people who do not work in it. He had been honoured by the programme before, as Cyber Personality of the Year in 2021, the kind of repeat recognition the Hall of Fame is built to record.
A decade of winners sits in the Hall of Fame.
What the panel scores against
Advocacy is easy to claim and hard to prove. The panel works against published criteria, and the strongest entries answer four questions plainly. Who did the nominee reach who would not otherwise have listened. What did those people do differently afterwards. Can the change be checked by someone other than the nominee. And did the work widen the field, drawing in people who had been kept out or had counted themselves out.
An advocate earns this honour by moving people, not metrics. A talk that filled a room matters less than the apprentice who took up a place because of it, or the small business owner who finally turned on multi-factor authentication after a session pitched in plain language. The panel reads for that human aftermath.
What a winning record looks like
Strong nominations in this category trace a line from the nominee to a person who changed. A school that runs a security club because someone volunteered to start it. A team that reports incidents earlier because someone made it safe to admit a mistake. A career that began because an advocate answered a cold message and kept answering. The work is checkable, and the people it reached can speak to it.
Weak nominations count audiences. Conference stages, podcast downloads, post impressions. Those numbers describe the size of a megaphone, and the panel reads past them to the question that decides the category: did anyone become safer, or join the field, because of this person. Reach without that answer is just noise at scale.
Cyber Security Advocate of the Year
Who can be nominated as Cyber Security Advocate?
Anyone who carries the case for security to people beyond the profession and can show the difference it made. Educators, community organisers, mentors and practitioners who do this work all qualify. Audience size is not the test; changed behaviour is.
How is an advocate different from an influencer?
The Influencer category recognises someone who shapes the conversation within the field. The Advocate category recognises someone who reaches people outside it, boards, workforces and newcomers, and brings more of them in.
When was the category introduced?
In the 2026 restructure of the programme, which organised the awards into five individual categories and five organisational ones.
Who won Cyber Security Advocate of the Year in 2026?
Jim West, recognised for sustained work putting the case for security in front of people outside the profession. He was earlier honoured by the programme as Cyber Personality of the Year in 2021.
Does sponsorship affect who wins?
No. Every winner is chosen by an independent panel that scores nominations against published criteria. Recognition is judged on merit and cannot be bought.