Nominations are open • Enter by February 27, 2027 • Time left: Start a nomination
Award categoryCybersecurity Product / Service
The Cybersecurity Excellence Awards recognize products that see and control how employees use AI tools. The category covers discovery of AI apps in use, policy on which are allowed and limits on what data reaches them.
Nominations are open
Enter this category by February 27, 2027. Anyone can submit an entry: the company, the nominee, a colleague or an agency.
The AI Usage Control category covers securing the workforce's use of AI, not AI used for security. Typical entries find the AI chat tools, assistants, coding assistants, browser extensions, AI agents staff install themselves and AI features inside SaaS apps, decide which are allowed, warn or block users in the moment, and stop sensitive data such as source code, customer records or credentials from being pasted or uploaded into them.
Usage control is about people and the AI tools they reach. Protecting AI applications an organization builds fits AI Application and Runtime Security, and controlling the data AI systems can retrieve fits AI Data Security and Governance. Usage control products can additionally enter Security for AI, the broad category, whether or not they also secure models and agents. Wider data loss prevention fits Data Loss Prevention (DLP).
Each category is judged separately, so you can enter a product in every category that matches what it does, with a separate nomination for each. Tailor each nomination to that category's focus. Entering several related categories gives the product more than one chance to be recognized.
An independent jury of security practitioners, analysts and CISOs scores each nomination on leadership, innovation and impact. Each nomination competes in its category against organizations of similar size and region, so a mid-sized firm is not ranked against a global enterprise. Your entry package, any sponsorship and public votes do not affect the jury's scores.
Strong entries in this category show:
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.
A vendor can enter its own product or service, and a PR agency can enter it on a client's behalf. The nomination form has a confidential field for detail that is shared with the judges and not published, such as customer names, deployment figures or roadmap. Deadlines, pricing and entry steps are on the How it Works page.