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Why Frost & Sullivan Named Picus the Innovation Leader in Automated Security Validation

Written by Suleyman Ozarslan, PhD | Feb 18, 2026 1:27:12 PM

In the cybersecurity world, "innovation" is a word that gets thrown around until it loses its meaning. Every day, I see a new tool promising to fix everything with a splash of AI. But true innovation isn't about the next shiny object; it’s about solving the hard, messy problems that keep CISOs up at night.

That is why today is a milestone I am incredibly proud to share. Frost & Sullivan has released their Frost Radar™: Automated Security Validation, 2026, and they have named Picus Security the Innovation Index Leader.

But that’s not the whole story. We were also recognized as a Growth Index Standout, validating that our vision isn't just technologically superior, it is scaling rapidly across the world's largest enterprises.

This recognition is not just a badge for our website. It is validation of a vision we have been building: Agentic Exposure Validation.

The Shift: The Era of Agentic AI

We have come a long way since Picus pioneered Breach and Attack Simulation (BAS). While we are proud to have defined that category, the industry is now undergoing a fundamental evolution. Frost & Sullivan notes that the broader adoption of agentic AI is redefining cybersecurity solutions, enabling workflows that are contextual, predictive, and autonomous.

This is the shift that matters. The market is currently flooded with "AI wrappers" that simply summarize text. At Picus, we didn't just adapt to the AI era; we defined the cutting edge by operationalizing an Agentic Strategy that is already in place today.

We aren't just simulating attacks anymore; we are deploying autonomous agents to discover gaps in defenses, validate your readiness, prioritize exposures and fixes, and mobilize the fixes that ensure your immunity.

The Backend: Our Security Data Fabric

Everyone is talking about AI agents, but here is the brutal truth: Agentic AI is only as good as the data it consumes. If you feed an agent fragmented inputs (siloed vulnerability scans, disconnected EDR alerts, isolated attack simulation results, and scattered asset inventories) you don't get intelligence.

This is where Picus stands alone. Frost & Sullivan specifically recognized our Security Data Fabric as a key driver of our innovation. We have built the industry's only fabric that unifies three critical dimensions into a single, real-time view:

  1. Asset Intelligence: Knowing every server, user, and cloud resource.
  2. Exposure Intelligence: Identifying vulnerabilities and misconfigurations.
  3. Security Control Effectiveness: Knowing exactly how your defenses perform against real threats.

This fabric provides the "wisdom" our agents need to distinguish between a theoretical risk and a business-critical exposure.

The Architecture: A Dual AI Strategy

To truly operationalize Agentic Exposure Validation, we need more than just a chatbot or a simple wrapper around an LLM. We need a mesh of specialized agents that can think, plan, and act across the entire security lifecycle. We call this our Dual AI Strategy.

We utilize a sophisticated structure of specialized agents:

  • Vertical Agents ("The Doers"): These agents live within specific layers of your stack. They bring autonomy to tasks like autonomously building threats from intelligence and validating detections without human intervention.

  • Horizontal Agents ("The Thinkers"): These agents operate across the Security Data Fabric. They possess the unique ability to "cross-cut" data, correlating vulnerabilities, security controls, and attack paths to identify risks to your Crown Jewels.

This delivers the "Wow" factor: It transforms security validation from simply reporting problems to actionable, automated workflows: identifying the specific gaps that hackers can actually exploit, and automatically applying the precise fixes to close them immediately.

Why This Matters for You

The market is crowded. There are over 20 participants in this space. But as the Frost & Sullivan report notes, Picus stands out because we offer Total Validation.

We are the only platform that answers the three questions that matter most to a CISO:

  • Adversarial: How can an attacker get in? (Automated Pentesting)
  • Defensive: Can we stop them? (Security Control Validation)
  • Risk: Does it matter? (Exposure Prioritization)

To answer these questions honestly, you cannot just look at one slice of the stack. We have integrated every critical layer of validation into one cohesive platform. We don't just test one door; we test the entire building:

    • Security Control Validation (Firewalls, WAF, IPS, EDR, email gateways, …).
    • Detection Stack Validation (SIEM/EDR rules, logging, alerting).
    • Attack Path Validation (Automated Pentesting).
    • Exposure Validation (Prioritization based on compensating controls and organizational context).
    • AI Security Validation (Protecting internal LLMs).
  • Cloud & Kubernetes Security Validation
  • Identity Security Validation

Growth and Trust

Innovation matters, but trust scales. Being named a Growth Index Standout by Frost & Sullivan confirms that the market is voting for Picus.

We closed a strong year by welcoming over 20 Fortune 500 accounts to the Picus platform. From banking giants to critical infrastructure, organizations are choosing Picus because we provide a proven, scalable path to resilience.

This growth isn't accidental, it's driven by trust. The world's most complex enterprises are moving beyond legacy tools and adopting our platform because it delivers what they need most: clarity and confidence.

Looking Ahead

We are proud of this recognition, but our vision is set on the next frontier. We are moving beyond periodic validation to an autonomous structure that detects shifts in organizational context, assesses their impact, and instantly executes necessary validate exposures and mobilizes fixes. This aligns your defense with the attacker’s tempo.

By leveraging deep, bidirectional integrations across your ecosystem, we are shifting from static snapshots to dynamic, real-time operations. This approach ensures near-zero latency in detecting and closing gaps, effectively eliminating the adversary’s operating window. We are building a future where validation drives automated response, creating a self-healing security posture that adapts instantly to every change in your environment.

I want to thank our team, our partners, and our customers. You are the reason we continue to lead.

Read the Press Release here.

Download the Full Frost & Sullivan Radar Report.