ISARA Wins Best Critical Infrastructure Platform in the 2026 Cybersecurity Stars Awards

Recognition from The Hacker News honors ISARA Advance for giving security teams continuous visibility into the cryptography running across their networks — surfacing the deprecated protocols and weak configurations the existing security stack cannot see.

WATERLOO, Ontario--(BUSINESS WIRE)--ISARA today announced it has been named the winner in the Critical Infrastructure category of the 2026 Cybersecurity Stars Awards, an inaugural program run by The Hacker News. Winners were selected by an independent panel of judges recognizing contribution, innovation, and impact across the cybersecurity industry.

The award recognizes ISARA Advance, the Autonomous Crypto Posture Management (ACPM) platform. Roughly thirty percent of the typical enterprise network is already running on protocols that were broken years ago — deprecated algorithms, weak ciphers, and misconfigured certificates — and no tool in the existing security stack surfaces them. ISARA Advance continuously discovers the cryptography running across an organization’s environment, validates it against current and post-quantum standards, prioritizes remediation by business risk, and drives the work through the operational systems security teams already use. Interested enterprises can get a sample view of what’s broken today by downloading the Cryptography Validator Report on the ISARA website.

"Critical infrastructure runs on cryptography nobody is looking at. You cannot migrate cryptography you cannot see — and most organizations cannot see it,” said Atsushi Yamada, Chief Executive Officer, ISARA. “That is the problem we built ISARA Advance to solve: surface what is broken today, fix it through the workflows teams already run, and walk into the post-quantum era already in control. This recognition is about the present-day exposure, not just a future one.”

“The Trump Administration's quantum executive order puts real pressure behind immediate action on the transition to post-quantum cryptography,” Yamada noted. “In my thirty years in this field, I have watched many cryptographic transitions. The federal deadlines are not far off. Enterprises and governments must take action now.”

The quantum era sharpens the deadline. Post-quantum standards are finalized, and federal mandates are in motion, and “harvest now, decrypt later” means encrypted traffic captured today becomes tomorrow’s exposure. Because ISARA Advance measures cryptographic posture continuously, post-quantum migration becomes the natural second act of work already underway — not a separate fire drill when the deadline arrives.

On selecting ISARA, the Cybersecurity Stars Awards judging panel noted: “ISARA has built a platform that gives security teams continuous visibility into the cryptography running across their enterprises and agencies, surfacing outdated protocols and weak configurations that other security tools miss entirely. Their work to help organizations understand and manage their cryptographic posture, especially as the industry moves toward post-quantum standards, is a meaningful contribution to the field.”

ISARA’s official winner profile is available at the Cybersecurity Stars Awards website.

About ISARA

ISARA is the Autonomous Crypto Posture Management platform built for enterprise and federal organizations that can no longer afford to be blind to the cryptography running on their own networks. ISARA Advance continuously discovers cryptographic assets, validates them against current and post-quantum standards, prioritizes remediation by business risk, and drives remediation through the operational systems security teams already use — deploying alongside existing security programs. Headquartered in Waterloo, Ontario, ISARA is available to federal agencies and enterprises worldwide.