About the Network Security Policy Management (NSPM) category
What belongs in this category
The Network Security Policy Management (NSPM) category covers products that manage the rules on firewalls, routers and cloud security groups from many vendors in one place. Typical entries find unused, risky and duplicate rules, show which traffic a change would allow, automate change requests with approvals, and keep evidence for audits.
The firewalls themselves fit Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) or Hybrid Mesh Firewall (HMF). Segmentation policy enforced on workloads fits Microsegmentation. As a network product, an NSPM tool can enter Network Security as well, and one that mainly collects audit evidence can also enter Compliance Automation.
Related categories to enter
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.
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 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:
- Leadership — the policy the product manages: firewalls and devices connected, vendors and clouds supported, rules analyzed, and customers that run change management through it.
- Innovation — a policy problem solved in a new way, such as change requests designed and checked automatically, risk shown before a rule goes live, or one model of the network across vendors and clouds.
- Impact — results for customers: rules removed or tightened, time to make a change, change-related outages, audit preparation time. Give before-and-after figures.
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
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.
