About the Junior Cybersecurity Professional of the Year category
Who this award is for
This award is for people early in their security career. A manager or mentor can nominate a junior colleague, or you can enter yourself.
The jury looks at what the nominee has contributed and how much they have grown for their level of experience. Experienced practitioners fit Cybersecurity Professional of the Year, and people who teach and develop new talent fit Cybersecurity Educator of the Year.
Related categories to enter
Each category is judged separately, so you can enter a nominee in every category that fits their work, with a separate nomination for each. Tailor each nomination to that category's focus. Entering several related categories gives the work more than one chance to be recognized.
How entries are judged
An independent jury of security practitioners, analysts and CISOs scores each nomination on leadership, innovation and impact. Each nomination competes in its category against peers in a similar setting and region. Your entry package, any sponsorship and public votes do not affect the jury's scores.
Strong entries in this category show:
- Leadership — responsibility taken on early, such as owning a project, a process or a system, or guiding others despite limited experience.
- Innovation — initiative beyond the job description: a tool built, a process improved, research published or a vulnerability found and responsibly disclosed.
- Impact — what changed because of the nominee's work and how quickly they grew, including contributions to the community such as talks, open-source work or mentoring. Specific examples with results carry more weight than adjectives: a vulnerability disclosed with its CVE, a process shortened by a stated amount, a tool others now use.
The jury awards Gold, Silver or Bronze, or a Finalist badge, and results are published on this site and announced to the 600,000+ member Cybersecurity Insiders community. Every approved nomination also enters the separate Community Choice award, decided by public votes.
How to enter
Anyone can submit a nomination: the nominee, a colleague or manager, the organization, or an agency entering a client. The nomination form has a confidential field for detail that is shared with the judges and not published, such as internal figures, customer names or incident details. Deadlines, pricing and entry steps are on the How it Works page.
