Meet the Agents of Action: Celebrating the security leaders who turn visibility into results

Every security team has dashboards. Almost none have the operational muscle to turn that visibility into outcomes. That’s the actionability gap, and at Adapt 2026, we spotlighted the people closing it.

Earlier this week, hundreds of security leaders gathered at Cipriani Wall Street for Adapt 2026, our annual cybersecurity industry and customer conference. We shared major product milestones, heard from former NASA CIO Renee Wynn on cyber resilience at scale, and went deep with CISOs and practitioners on the real journey from fragmented visibility to decisive action.

But the highlight for me was a segment we called Agents of Action: our inaugural awards program recognizing customers and partners who are closing the gap between knowing what’s in their environment and actually doing something about it.

Behind every successful security program is a person who refused to accept the status quo and did the hard work of making change real. That’s who these awards are for.

Why “Agents of Action?”

This year’s Adapt theme centered on the Actionability Gap: the persistent disconnect between security investment and security outcomes. Our 2026 Actionability Report, conducted with the Ponemon Institute, puts it plainly: only 23% of security teams consistently apply the context needed to prioritize effectively, and more than a third still rely on fully manual remediation workflows. Too many organizations have the data but lack the clarity, context, and operational leverage to act on it.

The leaders we honored yesterday are closing that gap every day. 

The Optimizer: Carolyn Charney, IT Asset Management Lead, Tokio Marine HCC

Carolyn operates in what she describes as a “company of companies,” with 16 independent business units, each running its own tools and processes. Where many would see an intractable problem, Carolyn saw an opportunity to build complete visibility. She consolidated a decentralized ecosystem into a single, trusted source of truth, dramatically reducing the investigative burden on her teams and replacing guesswork with certainty.

Her advice: “If your teams are still reconciling data manually, you're already behind.”

The Connector: Kara Keene, Senior Manager of Attack Surface Reduction Engineering, TransUnion

At TransUnion, the biggest obstacle to progress was six simple words: “We’ve always done it this way.” Kara recognized that when every team is looking at different data, you don't have alignment. She turned security from an enforcer into a partner by giving the organization a shared lens and a unified set of facts, closing coverage gaps that had persisted for years.

As Kara puts it: “We finally know what we have, and that changes everything about how we protect it.”

The Eliminator: Alyssa Robinson, CISO, HubSpot

In an industry that measures success by doing more, Alyssa believes competitive advantage comes from the discipline to do less. At HubSpot, the volume of alerts and emerging threats creates what she calls “operational whiplash.” By pairing centralized visibility with automated enforcement, Alyssa cut through the noise so her team could focus on the gaps, misconfigurations, and exposures that actually demand attention.

As Alyssa says: “Being an Agent of Action means choosing where to act, and doing so with precision.”

The Guardian: Luis Valenzuela-Lopez, Manager, Information Security Program, InComm

Operating in financial services, Luis knows success is often defined by what doesn't happen. He refused to accept a reactive posture, building a culture of continuous coverage and proactive defense with a strategy of “Plan A, Plan B, and Plan C.”

As he says: “If we’ve done our job well, the worst outcomes never occur.”

The Innovator: Alyssa Miller, CISO, Epiq

Alyssa has spent her career proving that cybersecurity is a bridge to business growth, not a blocker. At Epiq, she recognized that organizations can only move as fast as their understanding of their environment allows. By aligning security outcomes directly with business goals, she turned asset intelligence into a shared operational model that brings engineering and operations together, replacing debate with data.

As Alyssa puts it: “If my only story is ‘I make things secure,’ that’s not enough. I have to show how security helps the business move faster.”

Partner awards: Recognizing the teams behind the mission

No security program operates in isolation, and neither does Axonius. At Adapt 2026, we recognized two partners from our Axonius Partner Awards who go beyond the transactional to truly embody our mission.

The Optimizer Award: GuidePoint Security

For the partner who is relentlessly process-minded and continuously refines how we work together for maximum operational leverage. Lee Gitzes accepted on behalf of the GuidePoint team.

The Visionary Award: AWS

For the partner who connects the dots across cloud, identity, and exposure management to imagine new possibilities for customers. Pierre Couteau accepted on behalf of AWS.

What closing the actionability gap actually looks like

Every one of these recipients faced the same challenges the broader industry faces: fragmented visibility, manual workflows, organizational silos, and a constantly expanding attack surface. What set them apart wasn’t access to better tools. It was the decision to demand better outcomes and the persistence to see it through.

At Axonius, we build the platform. These are the people who make it matter.

Continue the conversation

• Explore what we announced: Axonius Delivers AI-Powered Remediation Across Industry’s Broadest Set of Asset Classes and Environments

• Read the findings: Download the Axonius 2026 Actionability Report

• See Axonius in action: Take a product tour or request a demo

• Connect with us: Follow Axonius on LinkedIn and X

To our 2026 Agents of Action: thank you for your partnership, your candor, and your commitment to raising the bar. You are the standard.