Enterprise cybersecurity is entering a period where identifying risk is only part of the job. Security teams are now expected to prioritize exposures, automate responses, secure AI adoption, and maintain visibility across increasingly complicated environments.
CISO Whisperer has released its latest look at vendors to watch at Gartner Security & Risk Management Summit 2026, highlighting companies working across exposure management, identity, third-party risk, human security, observability, and continuous testing.
Automation Moves Into The Security Workflow
A number of vendors are focused on reducing the manual work between identifying a security issue and addressing it.
Reclaim Security is building an autonomous exposure remediation platform that uses an AI security engineer to discover exposures, understand business context, and execute fixes. Its platform correlates findings across more than 40 security tools, while PIPE technology is designed to predict the potential business impact of a change before deployment.
ThreatLocker approaches prevention through Zero Trust application controls. Its deny-by-default model controls what applications can execute, communicate, and access, with protections designed to contain ransomware, rogue code, credential theft, privilege abuse, data exfiltration, and lateral movement. The company also applies these controls to emerging AI-related risks.
SecurityScorecard is bringing automation to third-party risk. Its platform combines vendor monitoring, security ratings, questionnaires, compliance, and threat intelligence. Its TITAN AI platform adds workflows designed to continuously assess and prioritize risks across the vendor ecosystem.
Identity Is Expanding Beyond Employees
AI agents and machine workloads are creating new identity challenges for security teams.
1Password is addressing that shift through a platform spanning password management, privileged access, SaaS management, and its Credential Broker. The technology is designed to verify AI agents and machine workloads at runtime and provide only the credentials they are authorized to use.
Island is approaching the changing enterprise environment from another critical access point: the browser. Its enterprise browser combines security, IT controls, and productivity, while its broader platform includes enterprise AI and an enterprise network based on its Perfect Packet architecture.
As more enterprise activity moves through browsers and automated systems, controlling access at these points becomes increasingly important.
Preparing People And Systems For AI
Not every cybersecurity problem can be solved through another technical control. Hoxhunt focuses on human cyber risk through phishing simulations, security awareness training, and security operations. Its adaptive simulations span email, SMS, phone calls, and Teams, with personalized training designed around individual behavior.
Immersive takes a broader view of readiness. Its Immersive One platform continuously tests people, workflows, security teams, AI agents, and leadership decisions under real-world pressure. The company is also focused on whether organizations can adopt AI safely and validate that security agents operate within governance requirements.
Visibility Becomes Part Of Security
Security teams increasingly need security data and infrastructure to work together.
Datadog combines observability and security across code, cloud, and runtime environments. Its security platform uses observability data and AI-driven automation to identify vulnerabilities and threats throughout the application lifecycle.
Axoflow is focused further down the data pipeline, providing technology to collect, process, route, and manage security data. With hundreds of integrations, its autonomous approach is designed to reduce pipeline maintenance, accelerate investigations, and lower SIEM costs.
FireMon addresses the network layer, helping organizations manage security policies across on-premises, cloud, and microsegmentation environments. Its platform supports policy analysis, firewall changes, and compliance.
Continuous Validation Replaces Periodic Checks
Synack is bringing AI and human expertise together for security testing. Its platform combines Sara AI Pentesting, the Synack Red Team, and automated testing capabilities to expand testing coverage while retaining human researchers for expert validation.
That reflects a broader change in security operations. Organizations increasingly need to know not just whether a control exists, but whether it continues to work as infrastructure, applications, identities, and threats change.
The Next Security Operating Model
The vendor landscape at Gartner Security & Risk Management Summit 2026 reflects an industry moving toward more continuous security operations. Automation is being applied to remediation and assessment, AI is becoming part of both the attack
