Cyber Security Product of the Year.
A defender judges a product by what it does on a bad day, not what the datasheet promises. This category honours the products that earned their place in the stack, and the panel scores them on the outcomes their users can point to.
The 2026 Product of the Year
Saviynt was named Cyber Security Product of the Year in 2026 for the Saviynt Identity Cloud, recognised by the panel for the way it brought identity governance, privileged access and application security into one place teams could actually run. The judges looked past the feature list to what changed for the people managing access at scale, where the risk of a single over-permissioned account is real.
A decade of winners sits in the Hall of Fame.
What the panel scores against
The criteria reward proof over promise. Judges ask what problem the product solves, who it solves it for, and how the makers know it worked. A product that can show a measured change in a defender's day, fewer false positives to chase, a control that an attacker could no longer walk through, scores well. The published methodology sets out how each entry is read and weighted.
Identity and access products feature often in this category's history, because the failure they guard against is so common. Saviynt's 2026 award continues a thread that runs back through the programme: Wallix took an identity and access management product honour in 2016, and Avecto was recognised for identity and access management in 2015. Different problems, different eras, the same test applied.
What a winning record looks like
Strong entries show a before and an after. A security team that closed a gap it had lived with, an organisation that passed a real test it might once have failed, a control that turned a likely breach into a non-event. The product's role in that outcome is clear, and the evidence is checkable.
Weak entries describe capability in the abstract. A long list of features, a roadmap, a category the makers say they lead. The panel reads past the positioning and looks for what the product did for the people who deployed it, and how they measured it.
Related honours have recognised products of every shape over the years, from Picus and its security control validation platform in 2021 to Blancco's drive eraser in 2022 and OPSWAT's MetaDefender in 2023. The thread that joins them is not the technology. It is that real users could point to what changed.
Cyber Security Product of the Year
What can be nominated as Cyber Security Product of the Year?
Any security product that can show what it changed for the people who use it. The test is evidence of impact in real deployments, not category size, market share or marketing reach.
Who won Cyber Security Product of the Year in 2026?
Saviynt, recognised for the Saviynt Identity Cloud, which brings identity governance, privileged access and application security into one platform. See the Saviynt profile.
When was the category introduced?
In the 2026 restructure of the programme, which organised the awards into five individual categories and five organisational ones. Product-related honours have run under earlier names since 2015.
How is recognition decided?
Every nomination is read in full and judged on merit. It is never bought.
How does the panel judge entries?
Against the published criteria, weighing evidence from real deployments and honest limits over claims. The methodology sets out how each entry is read.