Two EvoNexus portfolio companies are among the winners of Cyber Defense Magazine’s 2026 Top InfoSec Innovator Awards. QuSecure was named the Most Innovative Quantum Cybersecurity Company of the year, while AttackIQ earned three separate honors covering adversarial exposure validation, continuous threat exposure management, and agentic AI. Between them, the two companies took home four awards in a program now in its 14th year.
Inside the 2026 Top InfoSec Innovator Awards
Cyber Defense Magazine (CDM), founded in 2012 by cybersecurity entrepreneur and inventor Gary S. Miliefsky, uses the Top InfoSec Innovator Awards to spotlight the companies it sees moving the security industry forward. This year’s judges include Ron Gula of Gula Tech Adventures, Katie Gray of In-Q-Tel, Robert R. Ackerman Jr. of DataTribe, and Dr. Lindsey Polley de Lopez of VentureScope, alongside Miliefsky and other longtime security operators and investors.
That panel makes the Top InfoSec Innovator Awards a useful read on where experienced practitioners see real innovation. Two companies from the same incubator portfolio earning four of those awards is a strong showing, and it says a lot about the problems EvoNexus founders choose to take on.
QuSecure Named Most Innovative Quantum Cybersecurity Company
QuSecure builds crypto-agile infrastructure for the move to post-quantum cryptography (PQC), the new generation of encryption designed to stay secure once quantum computers can break the algorithms most organizations rely on today. Top InfoSec Innovator Awards judges recognized its crypto-agile control plane, which finds and fixes vulnerable cryptography without forcing customers to rip and replace the systems they already run.
That control plane is QuProtect R3, a production-ready platform for cryptographic command and control. It keeps a continuous inventory of the cryptography running across a network, moves connections to TLS 1.3 with ML-KEM with very little hands-on work, rotates certificates automatically, and generates compliance evidence around the clock. Because it is backwards compatible with legacy infrastructure, QuProtect R3 runs across cloud, on-premises, air-gapped, and sovereign environments and supports frameworks including CNSSP 15/NSM-10, CNSA 2.0, PCI DSS, and DORA.
CEO and Co-founder Rebecca Krauthamer pointed to a reality most security teams know well: they cannot wait to finish a full inventory before fixing anything, and they cannot afford to tear out what they have already built. In her words, “QuProtect R3 gives them a control plane for cryptography,” so teams can enforce policy, rotate algorithms, and meet compliance requirements from one platform starting on day one. QuSecure showcased their platform at CyberDefenseCon 2026 this week.
CDM Publisher Gary S. Miliefsky said QuSecure reflects the three qualities judges look for in a winner: it understands tomorrow’s threats today, delivers a cost-effective solution, and innovates in unexpected ways that help organizations get ahead of the next breach.
QuSecure’s Top InfoSec Innovator Awards win caps a strong year for the company, which was also named a 2026 Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum and has been recognized by Frost & Sullivan as the Global Post-Quantum Cryptography Product Leader. Its customers include U.S. defense agencies, global financial institutions, and critical infrastructure providers.
AttackIQ Wins Three Top InfoSec Innovator Awards
AttackIQ, which specializes in threat-informed Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM), was honored in three categories:
- Market Disruptor in Adversarial Exposure Validation (AEV)
- Next Gen in Continuous Threat Exposure Management
- Most Innovative in Agentic AI Platform
Together, AttackIQ’s three Top InfoSec Innovator Awards reflect the company’s push to replace fragmented, point-in-time security assessments with continuous, evidence-based security operations. By pairing adversarial exposure validation with AI, the company helps organizations find the attack paths an adversary could actually exploit, confirm whether their security controls work, and focus on the exposures that carry the most risk.
At the center of that work is AVA Agentic OS, which AttackIQ describes as the industry’s first agentic operating system purpose-built for CTEM. AVA coordinates specialized AI agents that run autonomous security missions across threat intelligence, adversarial exposure validation, detection engineering, and defense optimization, then ties those results to remediation and the reduction of threat debt.
“Organizations don’t need more disconnected security findings,” said Carl Wright, Chief Commercial Officer at AttackIQ. What they need, he explained, is clarity on which exposures actually matter, whether their defenses can stop an attack, and which actions will reduce risk. Wright added that the awards reinforce AttackIQ’s commitment to making continuous, evidence-based security a reality through AVA Agentic OS.
AttackIQ works with some of the world’s largest enterprises, government agencies, and managed security providers. The company also became the first breach and attack simulation provider to secure a continuous Authority to Operate from the U.S. Marine Corps Recruiting Command.
What Four Top InfoSec Innovator Awards Say About the EvoNexus Portfolio
QuSecure and AttackIQ come at cybersecurity from opposite directions. QuSecure protects the cryptography that keeps data private as the quantum era gets closer. AttackIQ continuously proves whether an organization’s defenses hold up against real adversary behavior. Both sell to some of the most demanding buyers in security, from defense agencies to global enterprises, and both were recognized by Top InfoSec Innovator Awards judges who have built and backed security companies themselves.
That is exactly the kind of company EvoNexus exists to support: founders tackling hard technical problems that will shape how organizations operate for years to come. Four Top InfoSec Innovator Awards in a single program is a clear sign that two of them are setting the pace. The timing matters: just this week, the NSA warned that a newly disclosed set of PHP vulnerabilities known as PHP2Shell could let attackers take over web servers without any login credentials, and government and news sites across the U.S. and Europe went offline as a precaution, the kind of fast-moving threat that makes continuous defense validation and crypto-agile security more important than ever.
The NSA’s notice was a warning about a security flaw, not a report of an actual attack. It said hackers are “likely” to start exploiting it, but no confirmed attacks had been reported yet. So the sentence calls it a “threat” rather than a “cyberattack,” which keeps it accurate. “NSA” and “PHP2Shell” are the search terms people are using for this right now.
Congratulations to Rebecca and the QuSecure team, and to the entire AttackIQ team, on their 2026 Top InfoSec Innovator Awards. The full list of 2026 winners is available on the Cyber Defense Awards website.
About QuSecure:
QuSecure is a crypto-agile infrastructure provider and leader in post-quantum cryptography. Its QuProtect R3 platform gives organizations a complete cryptographic inventory, policy-based governance, and a path to compliant cryptography, from TLS upgrades to full post-quantum migration, without rewriting applications. Learn more here.
About AttackIQ:
AttackIQ is a leader in threat-informed Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM). Through AVA Agentic OS, it helps organizations continuously validate their defenses, break attack paths, and reduce threat debt with evidence-based security operations. Learn more here.
About EvoNexus:
EvoNexus is California’s leading nonprofit technology startup incubator, with locations in San Diego and Irvine. Since its formation in 2010, EvoNexus has successfully built 291 companies with an exceptional survival rate of over 85%, with portfolio companies securing over $2.4B in cumulative venture funding, backed by a network of more than 400 venture capital and independent investors, and achieving 63 acquisitions alongside a successful IPO, with additional public market exits on the horizon and over $6 billion in pre-exit valuations. Backed by an elite network of global corporate partners, including Irvine Company, Qualcomm, AMD, BAE Systems, Viasat, ResMed, LG, Murata Manufacturing, and EMD Electronics, EvoNexus continues to drive massive economic impact across Southern California’s innovation economy, culminating in a record-breaking year with $619M raised for the portfolio in 2025 alone.