Dispel Wins Cutting Edge Secure Remote Access in Cyber Defense Magazine's 2026 Top InfoSec Innovator Awards

Dispel's 2026 innovations in session intelligence, compliance, on-prem deployment, and identity earn a Top InfoSec Innovator award for secure remote access. 

ORLANDO, Fl. — October 21, 2026 — Dispel, the leader in Secure Remote Access (SRA) for Operational Technology (OT), today announced it has won the Cutting Edge Secure Remote Access category in the Top InfoSec Innovator Awards for 2026 from Cyber Defense Magazine (CDM), a leading electronic information security magazine. The award was announced during CyberDefenseCon 2026 in Orlando, as part of the 14th annual Cyber Defense Awards. 

“In critical infrastructure, security that slows down operations doesn’t get adopted. It gets worked around,” said Ethan Schmertzler, Co-CEO of Dispel. “We build every capability around the friction a customer is living with, and the test is always the same: Does the secure path become the fastest path? This award recognizes that discipline, and it belongs to the customers who keep holding us to it.” 

Industrial organizations depend on remote access to keep plants running, whether that means troubleshooting equipment, patching systems, or bringing in OEM and vendor experts without waiting for anyone to travel on site. OT Secure Remote Access makes that possible without the persistent attack surface, IT overhead, or workflow compromises legacy tools create. Most secure remote access stops at the login, while the Dispel Zero Trust Engine secures every session from login to disconnect and unifies OT Secure Remote Access, Industrial Data Streaming, Dispel Identity, Dispel Intelligence, and Dispel Compliance in one platform. 

A Year of Customer-Driven Innovation Across the Dispel Zero Trust Engine 

This year, Dispel delivered four platform advances, each built to close a specific gap in OT remote access. 

• Dispel Intelligence began with Session Forensics and Dynamic Risk Scoring in May, scoring every remote access session in real time from login through disconnect. 

• Dispel Compliance followed later in May with continuous, audit-ready evidence across NERC CIP, NIST, IEC 62443, and NIS2, replacing months of manual GRC evaluation. 

• Site Console brought the Dispel Zero Trust Engine fully on-premises in June for NERC CIP-regulated utilities and network-isolated sites. 

• Dispel Identity brought NIST IAL2 identity proofing to OT remote access in August, using government ID checks and biometric matching to verify the real person behind high-risk connections, not just the credential. 

The result is one platform that verifies who connects, scores what they do, and documents compliance that is deployable in the cloud, on-premises, or hybrid. 

“Dispel embodies three major features we judges look for with the potential to become winners: understanding tomorrow’s threats today, providing a cost-effective solution, and innovating in unexpected ways that can help mitigate cyber risk and get one step ahead of the next breach,” said Gary S. Miliefsky, Publisher of Cyber Defense Magazine. 

The full list of the Top InfoSec Innovators for 2026 is found here: cyberdefenseawards.com/top-infosec-innovators-for-2026/

Learn more about the Dispel Zero Trust Engine or request a demo at: dispel.com/book.