Forrester is excited to announce that we are now accepting nominations for the fourth annual Security & Risk Enterprise Leadership Award! At a time when AI is reshaping how organizations operate, decide, and engage, this award recognizes enterprises that demonstrate exceptional leadership using security, privacy, and risk management as strategic drivers of trust, resilience, and responsible innovation.

This is the only award dedicated to recognizing these capabilities as core enablers of trusted relationships with customers, employees, and partners — especially as enterprises that demand strong governance, accountability, and transparency by design. The award is open to both private- and public-sector organizations.

What Does The Award Recognize?

The Security & Risk Enterprise Leadership Award honors organizations that have transformed security-, privacy-, and risk-related functions from mere cost and compliance centers into capabilities that enable innovation and trusted experiences. The award is unique in that it celebrates the entire organization, not individual leaders such as the CISO or chief trust officer, and acknowledges that progress often comes through navigating real-world challenges, including the security, privacy, and risk complexities introduced by AI-driven decision-making and agentic systems.

Winning organizations distinguish themselves by how they:

  • Deliver secure, private, and resilient customer and employee experiences by design.
  • Embed security, privacy, and risk thinking across the enterprise, rather than treating it as an afterthought.
  • Proactively assess and mitigate risk, including risks introduced by emerging technologies such as agentic AI.
  • Use trust as a strategic asset to enable growth, resilience, and competitive advantage, helping build the confidence required to deploy AI responsibly across customers, employees, and partners.

Why Participate?

You should apply if your organization is setting a higher bar for how security, privacy, and risk create value and can demonstrate measurable wins for customers, employees, and the business.

The 2026 award winner will be:

  • Recognized on stage at Forrester’s Security & Risk Forum, November 9–10, 2026, in Washington, DC.
  • Invited to participate in a fireside chat during a Forum track session.
  • Awarded three complimentary passes to the Security & Risk Forum, with additional passes available at a discounted rate.
  • Featured in Forrester research, videos, social content, and other channels.

Past winners have used this recognition to showcase how trust-driven security and risk strategies directly support growth, innovation, and resilience. And in the AI era, this award signals to customers, regulators, and employees the importance of AI that is secure, governed, and worthy of trust.

Who Should Apply?

The award is open to organizations with 1,000 or more employees that can demonstrate how their security, privacy, and risk practices drive meaningful outcomes across the business. High-tech service providers that compete in these markets are excluded, but they can nominate clients (with those clients’ permission, of course). If you’ve experienced a crisis (a breach, outage, compliance fine, or privacy abuse) recently, we still encourage you to apply, especially if you have insights to share about how your organization handled the crisis and what you learned from the experience.

Applicants should be willing to have a senior security, privacy, or risk executive participate in a Forum track session discussion and collaborate with Forrester on a post-award case study.

How To Apply

To apply, organizations must submit a completed entry form along with any optional supporting materials.

Submission deadline: June 29, 2026
The winner and finalists will be announced ahead of the Security & Risk Forum.

If your organization is building trust by design and embedding security, privacy, and risk management into how you innovate, operate, and lead, we encourage you to apply. We look forward to recognizing an organization that is setting the standard for trusted enterprise leadership in an era when AI makes trust not optional but foundational.