Nominees should be the tried-and-true, longer-standing companies which have been offering products and services to customers for at least three years.

What cutting-edge technologies are bursting onto the scene to address the newest cybersecurity needs facing organisations with some innovative capabilities? This category welcomes both new vendors and old pros looking to provide products and services that look to help shape the future by addressing fast-evolving threats through the creation of these types of offerings.

This includes tools and services from all product sectors specifically designed to meet the requirements of small- to mid-sized businesses.

This includes tools and services from all product sectors specifically designed to meet the requirements of large enterprises.

There have long been regulatory compliance tools, but they have been thrust to the fore in the cybersecurity sphere in the wake of GDPR, though this category encompasses other regulations and compliance requirements relevant to cybersecurity and GRC teams.

Support as well as service of products and services sold are critical components of any contract.

Intended to help those new and emerging companies stand out from the rest of the crowd, to shine a light on the vendors of tomorrow. This category welcomes entries from companies launched in the last three years, where the company has an office in UK/ Europe and provides support and service to customers in the UK/ Europe.

Products in this category deal with consumer-owned and controlled devices being used to get at corporate resources.

Privileged users can have the keys to the kingdom. So impersonating them and taking control of their access is a key target for attack groups, from criminals to nation states. Hence ramped up versions of identity and access control, network segmentation tools, and approaches to outsourcing and third parties are appropriate here, where they may have been considered too cumbersome for the average user. Yet these, often senior, users are just as resistant to friction as any other, so how do you reduce reliance on trust while still letting people do their job?

The faster and more effectively you respond to an incident, the shorter time you give attackers to steal from or do damage on your systems.

Products in this category include those that help organisations safeguard their intellectual property and customers’ critical data persistently – inside and outside the company.

These offerings provide a turnkey approach to an organisation’s primary technical security needs. These offerings can either be a co-located device at the client organisation facility, or can be a completely outsourced solution (SaaS) where the application to be protected would reside at the vendor’s data centre.

Email security addresses the ability to exchange email messages with assurance, as well as the ability to filter email messages based on content, source or other criteria.

Anything that connects to the internet is potentially hackable, so what solutions are there that organisations and their key employees can deploy to minimise and mitigate the threat posed by myriad connected devices?

These products perform network/device vulnerability assessment and/or penetration testing. They may use active or passive testing, and are either hardware or software-based solutions that report vulnerabilities using some standard format/reference.

The long-harboured promise of AI is finally manifesting. AI-driven cybersecurity capabilities are no longer just simple pattern- and rule-based capabilities. From big data analysis, dealing with millions of logs, to cutting-edge analytics, AI is powering cybersecurity more than ever before.

These technologies are deployed to protect data and/or applications in a cloud environment. They may also protect the cloud computing infrastructure itself.

These products focus on detecting insider threats, targeted attacks and other fraudulent activities by examining human behaviours, identifying patterns that are then analysed to detect anomalies that may indicate threats of loss or compromise to organisations’ critical data.

Products here provide enhanced security to end-users or devices by offering credentials for access to an authenticator or authentication server. Solutions that specialise in the biometric authentication of users is also included here.

While the emphasis has moved from protect to detect, it's not time to take down the barriers, and strength in depth reach still needs endpoint protection.

Contenders in this category should help cybersecurity teams research and analyse cybercrime and other threat trends and any technical developments being made by those engaging in cyber criminal activity against both private and public entities.

Products in this category address the identity management lifecycle in an enterprise environment, including password management, user provisioning and enterprise-access management.

Security information and event management (SIEM) tools are used to collect, aggregate and correlate log data for unified analysis and reporting.

Products here provide security solutions that specialise in the biometric authentication of users. The product provides identification and authentication using any of the following methods: finger/ thumb print/retinal scan/voice recognition/ hand/palm geometry/ facial recognition, or other unique user identifier.

These products are used within Software-as-a-Service instances, to better ensure security when SaaS is used, and to ensure the security of the data and services being run in the cloud. These tools ensure connectivity to cloud environments, and visibility and security of data and services in a cloud environment.

This category targets companies and organisations that provide end-user awareness training and/or certification programmes for those looking to ensure that its employees are knowledgeable and supportive of IT security and risk management plans.

The Rising Star of the Year award is a category that commends newcomers with the cybersecurity industry. The award recognises individuals who have been in the industry five years or less who are making great strides in the cybersecurity sector.

* By submitting an entry into any other category, you will receive a free of charge entry into the Rising Star category to nominate the up and coming talent within your business.

This award recognises the women leaders who are paving the way in the industry and challenging the status quo. This award will recognise women for their professional success, community involvement and leadership roles.

This award commends the standout champions who have led best-in-class programmes of IT security.