How to Nominate a Security Team for an Industry Award

To nominate a security team for an award, pick the category that fits the team's work, appoint an authorised representative to submit on the team's behalf, and build the entry around one implemented achievement from the last five years, with clear evidence of results. At Glonary® Awards, companies, startups and teams take part through an authorised representative. Every entry is scored by at least three appointed jury members against five published criteria, with no public voting. This guide walks SOC managers, CISOs and security leads through each step.

Check eligibility before you start

Security work is often continuous, so the first job is to define what you are entering. The Competition Rules and Eligibility set out the essentials:

• Teams enter through an authorised representative. Decide early who will submit and who in the organisation can approve that. In practice this is usually the CISO, head of security operations or another senior manager who can speak for the team.
• The achievement must have taken place within the last five years. A detection programme, an incident response overhaul or a security platform rollout completed within that window qualifies on timing. Older work does not.
• The work must be implemented. Participation is open to people and organisations with an implemented project, so plans and roadmaps on their own are not enough.
• Participation is international. Teams can enter from any country.

Read the rules in full, along with the Official Rules and Regulations, before you put time into drafting.

Choose the right category for your security team

Most SOC and security teams belong in Cybersecurity, which is aimed at security leaders, engineers and teams. That is the natural home for work such as:

• building or restructuring a security operations centre
• reducing detection and response times through new processes or tooling
• a security awareness or culture programme with measurable outcomes
• securing a cloud migration, an OT environment or a critical service

Some security work is mainly an engineering or product achievement. Examples include an internally built detection platform, a security tool with a strong user experience, or a secure-by-design product architecture. That kind of work may fit Technology and Design, which covers product, UX, engineering and design work. Ask yourself what the jury should notice first. If it is the security outcome, enter Cybersecurity. If it is how the thing was designed and built, consider Technology and Design.

Keep two rules in mind. Each nomination is a separate entry with its own entry fee, so entering two categories means two complete, separately written entries. And if the entrant is aged 35 or under and you are thinking about Young Innovators, the same project may not be entered in both Young Innovators and another category within the same cycle.

Gather evidence the jury can actually score

Security teams often struggle to describe their work without disclosing sensitive details. You do not need to reveal your architecture to write a strong entry. You do need to show what changed. Before you write, collect:

1. A clear baseline. What did the situation look like before the project, such as alert volumes, coverage gaps, response processes or audit findings?
2. The intervention. What the team designed, built or changed, and why that approach was chosen over the alternatives.
3. Results. Before-and-after measures the organisation already tracks, for example time to detect or respond, false-positive rates, coverage of critical assets, or the outcome of audits and exercises. Use your own verified figures and state how they were measured.
4. Sustainability. How the improvement is maintained through runbooks, automation, training, ownership and review cycles.

Agree internally what can and cannot be shared. Anonymise client names, systems and incident specifics where needed, and say plainly that you have done so. A redacted but specific entry reads far better than a vague one.

Write the entry around the five judging criteria

According to the Judging Process, every entry is scored on five equally weighted criteria, each from 0 to 10. The final score is the average of all valid evaluations. A useful approach is to make sure each criterion has a clear answer somewhere in your entry:

• Originality & Innovation: what was new or unusual about the team's approach, not just which products you bought.
• Clarity & Strategic Logic: the problem, the reasoning and the plan, set out so that a reader outside your organisation can follow it.
• Measurable Results & Impact: the evidence from the previous step, with context on why it matters to the business.
• Category Alignment: why this is clearly a cybersecurity achievement, or a technology and design one if you entered there.
• Strategic Depth & Sustainability: how the work fits the wider security strategy and how it will last.

Because the criteria carry equal weight, an entry with impressive numbers but no explanation of the reasoning, or a clever approach with no results, leaves points on the table. Credit the team properly as well. Name the roles involved and describe what each contributed, as long as your organisation is comfortable with that.

Plan the internal process and timing

A team nomination usually needs more sign-off than an individual one. Build in time for:

• approval from leadership, and from legal or communications if your organisation requires it
• a security review of the draft to catch anything that should not be disclosed
• team members checking the facts about their own contributions

Each category page publishes its Awards Timeline, covering the final submission deadline, the judging period and the winner announcement, together with its entry fee in USD per nomination entry. Fees depend on the programme and stage, so check the Cybersecurity page for current details. All deadlines expire at 23:59 UTC, so convert to your local time and do not leave submission to the final hour.

What happens after you submit

Each entry is scored independently by at least three appointed jury members. Jury members are appointed by invitation only and may not enter a cycle they judge. Recognition levels are Gold (9.00–10.00), Silver (8.00–8.99) and Bronze (7.00–7.99). Entries scoring below 7.00 receive no recognition, and those scores are kept confidential. Winners are notified by email, announced on the date shown in the category's Awards Timeline and then published on the Winners page.

Writing an award entry can be worthwhile even before any result. It pushes the team to put its impact into words and numbers, and that material is useful for internal reporting and for recognising people whose work is usually invisible when it goes well.

FAQ

Can a company enter a whole security team rather than one person?

Yes. Companies, startups and teams take part through an authorised representative, who submits the entry on the team's behalf.

Can we enter the same SOC project in both Cybersecurity and Technology and Design?

Each nomination is a separate entry with its own entry fee. The rule that bars the same project from two categories in a cycle applies to Young Innovators and another category. Check the Competition Rules and Eligibility for full details before entering more than once.

Is there public voting?

No. Every entry is scored independently by at least three appointed jury members against five equally weighted criteria.

Ready to put your security team forward? Review the Awards Timeline and entry fee on the Cybersecurity category page, or on Technology and Design if that fits your work better. Then start gathering your evidence. Questions can be sent to [email protected].