Expert Insights

Every financial quarter we award a series of badges to multiple vendors in each category. Expert Insights does not sell awards to vendors.  Each badge has a different criterion to be awarded to vendors. 

5 Star User Reviews: Awarded to vendors who receive the highest level of customer satisfaction from end user reviews.

Customers' Choice: Awarded to vendors who generate the most inquiries from customers looking for a quote or a demo.

"Best-Of" Category Awards: Awarded to vendors who offer recognize innovative cybersecurity solutions that provide powerful protection for their customers. Winners of our Best-Of awards are chosen by by our editorial and content team based on product features, market presence and customer score. 

Our Best-Of awards fall into the following categories:

Best Of Email Security Gateways: The top vendors that offer a platform that protects users’ inboxes against email-based threats such as spam, viruses, malware and distributed denial of service (DDoS). Email Security Gateways, or Secure Email Gateways, scan all inbound and outbound emails for signs of malicious content and stop this content from ever reaching its intended target.

Best Of Post-Delivery Protection: The top vendors that offer protection against email-based threats that have already made it into their victims’ inbox, such as advanced social engineering attacks. These include phishing, spear-phishing and business email compromise (BEC). Post-delivery protection platforms leverage powerful artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms to scan inbound, outbound and internal email and keep employees safe from sophisticated attacks that exploit human error.

Best Of Email Encryption: The top vendors that offer organizations with a method of securing their emails so that they’re delivered on time, without tampering, and to only the intended recipient. Email encryption solutions help businesses to secure any data sent via email, including attachments as well as the body copy.

Best Of Email Archiving: The top vendors that offer organizations a secure way of storing their emails in a secure environment that they can easily search and audit. Email archiving is essential not only for compliance, but also to help ensure business continuity should the email client fail, by ensuring that employees can still view and search their email records.

Best Of DMARC: The top vendors that offer a method by which businesses can validate emails being sent and received by their email domains. DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication Reporting and Conformance) solutions give organizations greater visibility into their email channels, as well as enable them to block any malicious emails sent via their domains, protecting their clients and customers from phishing attacks and spoofed domain messages.

Best Of Phishing Protection: The top vendors that offer protection against phishing attack, a sophisticated type of cybercrime based on email fraud. Phishing emails are one of the most common and financially dangerous online crimes that businesses are facing, and the numbers of attacks is increasing year-on-year. This category includes a combination of Email Security Gateways, post-delivery protection platforms and security awareness training solutions, all of which are designed to prevent and mitigate targeted phishing and business email compromise (BEC) attacks.

Best Of Endpoint Security: The top vendors that offer the means to protect all of an organization’s endpoints from malware and malicious applications, and investigate security incidents and alerts. Endpoint security solutions allow security teams to centrally manage all devices connected to their corporate network and respond remotely to security incidents.

Best Of Antivirus Software: The top vendors that offer small- and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) the tools to secure individual endpoints by detecting and blocking malicious files. Most modern antivirus solutions are cloud-based and take advantage of powerful machine learning algorithms and automates analyses to greatly enhance their detection rates and better protect their users.

Best Of Unified Endpoint Management (UEM): The top vendors that enable organizations to centrally monitor and manage all of the endpoints connected to their network, including client and mobile devices. UEM solutions provide useful analytics into device and application usage so that businesses can configure stronger usage policies and implement any necessary security measures to protect those devices.

Best Of Privileged Access Management (PAM): The top vendors that enable organizations to control and monitor the access permissions and activity of privileged users. Privileged accounts provide administrative levels of access to critical business systems, and PAM solutions allows administrators to ensure that these systems remain secure, while also encouraging better governance and compliance.

Best Of User Authentication And Access Management: The top vendors that ensure that only verified users can access company accounts and cloud applications. These solutions include a variety of features, such as multi-factor authentication and single sign-on, as well as reporting functionality, in order to secure business systems against security breaches and data loss.

Best Of Business Password Management: The top vendors that enable users to generate and securely store strong passwords to each of their corporate accounts, eliminating the use, re-use and insecure sharing of weak passwords. They also enable admins to easily monitor account access and password security across the whole organization.

Best Of Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA): The top vendors that offer MFA, an advanced authentication method that requires the user to provide two or more forms of identity verification before they’re granted access to their account. MFA helps to secure corporate data by ensuring that hackers can’t gain access to user accounts, even if they manage to steal or crack a user’s password.

Best Of Single Sign-On (SSO): The top vendors that offer users a simple way of signing into all of their business accounts, desktop applications and web portals using a single password. SSO solutions help improve an organization’s password security, while saving IT administrators time and resources.

Best Of Web Security: The top vendors that offer protection against web-based threats such as phishing websites. There are two main types of web security solutions: web filters, which filter harmful websites and block web-based malware and viruses, and browser isolation platforms, which isolate users’ browsing activity in a remote desktop that sandboxes any malicious webpages or attachments.

Best Of Enterprise VPNs: The top vendors that offer a business-grade virtual private network. VPNs create a private network across a public internet connection, giving the user privacy by hiding their IP address and encrypting their connections. They secure all online activity against anyone trying to access it without the user’s permissions, improve security while connected to public Wi-Fi networks, and allow admins to configure access controls that restrict users from accessing areas of the network that they don’t need.

Best Of Security Awareness Training: The top vendors that offer training programs designed to transform employees into a strong layer of defense against social engineering attacks such as phishing and business email compromise (BEC). These solutions comprise engaging training materials that teach employees how to identify and report suspicious activity, admin reporting tools, and realistic attack simulations that drill employees on what they’ve learned.

Best Of Backup And Recovery: The top vendors that offer protection against data loss, including cloud data, due to hardware malfunction or cyberattacks such as ransomware. Backup and recovery solutions capture a point-in-time copy of files, databases and entire computers and write these copies out to secondary storage devices so that companies can recover it in case of emergency.

Best Of CASBs: The top vendors that enable organizations to take control over their cloud data by monitoring activity and ensuring that security policies are properly enforced. On top of their account activity monitoring and compliance enforcement, CASBs also secure data via encryption protocols and access controls across cloud accounts.