Nominations are open • Enter by February 27, 2027 • Time left: Start a nomination
Award categoryCybersecurity Product / Service
The Cybersecurity Excellence Awards recognize data governance products. The category covers products that set and enforce rules for how data is classified, accessed, kept and deleted.
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 Data Governance category covers products that turn rules about data into practice across an organization. Typical entries label data by sensitivity, record who owns each data set and control access according to policy. They also set retention schedules, delete data when it is no longer needed, and give compliance teams evidence that the rules are followed.
Data classification products, which no longer have a category of their own, can enter here or Data Security Posture Management (DSPM). If AI does the classifying, AI-Assisted Data Protection is a further option. Privacy duties toward individuals fit Data Privacy Management, and data used by AI systems fits AI Data Security and Governance. A governance product can also enter Data Security, the broad data category.
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.