Cork Cyber wins Pax8 Startup Vendor of the Year award

Cork Cyber has won Pax8's Startup Vendor of the Year award at the Beyond26 gathering in Salt Lake City.

Pax8 recognised Cork Cyber for its work with managed service providers, or MSPs, as security operations shift from alerting users to taking action on threats. Nick Heddy, President and Chief Commerce Officer at Pax8, presented the award to Cork Cyber Chief Executive Officer Dan Candee and Chief Revenue Officer Andrew Mora on the main stage.

The recognition places Cork Cyber among vendors trying to address a long-running issue for MSPs: the burden of responding to security alerts across multiple client environments. The company focuses on cyber risk intelligence, automated remediation and financial protection for service providers managing security on behalf of customers.

In remarks accompanying the award, Cork Cyber pointed to demand for tools that reduce manual work for technicians. It is also extending its relationship with Pax8, whose cloud commerce marketplace gives vendors access to MSPs across North America.

That relationship matters because distributors and marketplaces play a central role in how MSPs buy and deploy software. Visibility through Pax8 gives Cork Cyber access to a broad channel audience at a time when security vendors are competing to show that automation can reduce workloads rather than add another management console.

Dan Candee set out the company's view of that market shift.

"We live in a fast world, and our partners do not have time to babysit another dashboard," said Dan Candee, Chief Executive Officer of Cork Cyber. "Detection without action is just a louder alarm. Our AI remediation engine does the work, fixing risk automatically, cutting tickets, and giving partners 66% better ROI on their security stack while we pay cash when it counts. Everything we build comes back to one question: does this create value for the partner? Being recognized as Pax8's startup vendor of the year tells us we are answering it the right way, and this award belongs to the MSPs who pushed us to deliver more."

Channel focus

Pax8 framed the award around efficiency in the channel and the need for tools that connect cyber risk management to financial outcomes. The marketplace operator has made artificial intelligence a prominent theme in its work with partners, especially where automation can reduce repetitive operational tasks.

Rob Rae, Senior Vice President of Community and Ecosystems at Pax8, described Cork Cyber's progress through that partner network.

"The channel has been waiting for someone to close the loop between cyber risk and financial outcomes, and to do it automatically," said Rob Rae, Senior Vice President of Community and Ecosystems at Pax8. "Cork is leveraging AI to create exactly the kind of efficiency we believe in, making MSPs smarter advisors and more profitable businesses. Watching this team grow through the Pax8 ecosystem and earn this recognition from our partners and leadership is the momentum we want to see from our vendor community."

Cork Cyber's platform includes products branded as Cork Vantage, Cork Protect and Cork Compass. The company says these tools are designed to give MSPs visibility into risks across customer environments, automate remediation work and provide financial protection if incidents still occur.

One of the more unusual elements in Cork Cyber's pitch is that financial layer. The company says claims are paid in under one hour and that it has a 22-of-22 paid claims record. That approach is intended to distinguish it from security software vendors whose role typically ends at detection, monitoring or advice.

MSP pressure

The backdrop to the award is a wider debate in the managed services market over how much security work can realistically be automated. MSPs are under pressure from clients to improve protection while containing staffing costs, even as attackers use generative AI and other tools to increase the scale and speed of phishing, social engineering and other campaigns.

For service providers, that creates a practical challenge. Security teams must process large volumes of alerts from different products, assess whether those alerts matter, and fix the underlying issue, often across several customers at once. Vendors such as Cork Cyber are trying to win market share by arguing that remediation, rather than alerting alone, is where value is created.

PCH Technologies, a Cork Cyber customer, said that proposition influenced its decision to adopt the platform.

"We added Cork because our clients need financial protection, and we saw a partner where we could lock arms around security and performance," said Tim Guim, Chief Executive Officer of PCH Technologies. "Cork's automation remediates issues before they ever hit our queue. We anticipate it will cut hours out of our week, make our clients measurably more secure, and give us a financial backstop if something slips through. That combination is rare, and the recognition is well deserved."