Seven Tech Trailblazers alumni making news across cloud, cyber security, AI, storage and identity. Posted by rax lakhani | 03/07/2026 Here at Tech Trailblazers, Tech Trailblazers is proud to champion the enterprise tech startups and scale-ups that keep blazing a trail long after their Awards moment. This week, the team here at Tech Trailblazers Towers has been cheering on seven alumni making positive news across cloud security, cyber security, AI, infrastructure automation, data protection, storage and identity. From marketplace momentum and major partner programmes to industry awards, platform expansion and senior leadership appointments, it is always exciting to see previous Tech Trailblazers Awards winners and runners-up continuing to grow, lead and innovate. Neil Briscoe and Enforza: making cloud perimeter security easier to deploy. First up, a special congratulations to Neil Briscoe, CTO and Founder of Enforza, its 2024 Male CxO Tech Trailblazers Award winner. Neil shared the news that Enforza is now available through AWS Marketplace, offering one-click deployment to help organisations secure their cloud perimeter and reduce egress total cost of ownership. It is a great example of founder-led execution: listening to the market, reducing friction for customers, and helping cloud teams take a more practical approach to security and cost control. Object First: double honours at the 2026 Storage Awards. Congratulations also to Object First, a 2025 Storage Trailblazers runner-up, which has picked up two honours at the 2026 Storage Awards: Enterprise Backup Hardware Vendor of the Year and Ransomware Company of the Year. For a company focused on ransomware-proof, on-premises backup storage, these awards are a powerful endorsement from the storage and cyber resilience community. Object First was also a Storage Trailblazers runner-up in 2023, so it is fantastic to see the company continuing to build recognition in such a critical area of enterprise technology. DNSFilter: strengthening its MSP partner programme. DNSFilter, a 2022 Security Trailblazers runner-up, has been in the news with the launch of an expanded MSP partner programme. As security costs continue to put pressure on managed service providers, DNSFilter's partner-first move is well timed. The company's focus on protective DNS and threat prevention has long been relevant to the Tech Trailblazers cyber security community, and it is encouraging to see a previous Security Trailblazers runner-up scaling its channel support for MSPs. Cynomi: expanding its AI-powered platform for MSPs and MSSPs. Cynomi, a 2025 AI Trailblazers runner-up, has announced what has been described as the largest platform expansion in the company's history. The update brings new capabilities for MSPs, MSSPs and vCISO consultancies, including expanded vulnerability management integrations, scheduled scanning, a Files Repository and broader AI Coworker functionality. This is exactly the kind of practical AI innovation Tech Trailblazers love to see: technology being applied to help service providers scale expertise, improve client delivery and strengthen cyber resilience. GoodData.AI: recognised as a Visionary in analytics and BI GoodData.AI, a 2012 Big Data Trailblazers runner-up, has been in the news after being recognised as a Visionary in the 2026 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms. For GoodData.AI, this is a brilliant long-tail Tech Trailblazers alumni story. More than a decade after being recognised in its Big Data category, the company is continuing to evolve at the intersection of analytics, AI, embedded intelligence and governed data. Its platform is focused on composable, AI-native analytics, with a headless semantic layer designed to help enterprises build trusted analytics into products, workflows and decision-making processes. GoodData.AI described the recognition as a milestone in its move from Niche Player to Visionary, and the news was also distributed via ACCESS Newswire and picked up by Yahoo Finance. It is always exciting to see a previous Big Data Trailblazers runner-up still helping shape the enterprise analytics market in the AI era. Cohesity: continued recognition in data protection and cyber resilience. Cohesity, its 2016 Storage Trailblazers winner, continues to demonstrate the long-term impact of Tech Trailblazers alumni. Solutions Review highlighted Cohesity's 2026 Google Cloud Partner of the Year Award for Infrastructure Modernization: Disaster Recovery/Backup. The recognition reflects Cohesity's work with Google Cloud to help organisations strengthen cyber resilience across cloud, hybrid and SaaS environments. For Tech Trailblazers, Cohesity is a brilliant reminder that today's trailblazing startups can become tomorrow's category leaders. 1Kosmos: appointing Roger Hale as Chief Information Security Officer. Finally, congratulations to 1Kosmos, its 2023 Blockchain Trailblazers winner, which has appointed former Informatica CISO Roger Hale as Chief Information Security Officer. As identity verification, passwordless authentication, AI governance, compliance and customer trust continue to converge, bringing in a senior security leader with deep enterprise experience is a strong move. It is great to see a previous Blockchain Trailblazers winner continuing to strengthen its leadership team as the company scales. Congratulations to its alumni. Tech Trailblazers congratulate all of its previous Tech Trailblazer Awards winners and runners-up who continue to build, scale and inspire across the global enterprise technology ecosystem. From Neil Briscoe and Enforza's cloud security momentum to Object First's storage awards success, DNSFilter's partner expansion, Cynomi's AI-powered platform growth, Spacelift's timely infrastructure research, Cohesity's continued industry recognition and 1Kosmos' leadership appointment, this week's alumni news is a brilliant snapshot of what Tech Trailblazers is all about. The Tech Trailblazers Awards were created to recognise enterprise technology innovation early, and it is always a joy to see its alumni continue blazing the trail. Could your company be next? Entries are open for the Tech Trailblazers Awards 2026, and Tech Trailblazers would love to hear from eligible startups and scale-ups working in AI, cyber security, cloud, blockchain, storage, developer technology, fintech, networking, sustainable tech, telecoms and other enterprise technology categories. The current 2026 Awards website states that entries are open to private technology companies under ten years old that are privately funded or VC-backed at Series C or earlier. Please check the latest eligibility details before entering. Rose Ross Chief Trailblazer and Founder Tech Trailblazers Awards If your company has previously been named as either a Tech Trailblazers Awards Winner or a Runner-up and you would like to share any recent/upcoming news with Tech Trailblazers, please drop Tech Trailblazers an email at [email protected]

MSPs need to rethink backup defense. June 17, 2026 COMMENTARY: MSPs are under more pressure because customers now expect help with AI, cybersecurity, backup, recovery, and overloaded IT environments. At the same time, ransomware attacks are getting harder to handle because attackers are using AI and are going after backup systems, too. Regular backups are no longer enough. If attackers can delete, change, or encrypt the backups, the customer may still be stuck paying a ransom. MSPs need better ransomware recovery plans, and immutable backup storage helps protect customer data from attackers, and it can also give MSPs a new service to package and sell. The technology landscape in 2026 is almost unrecognizable from the pre-AI era, and MSPs are at the forefront of it all. They're expected to be up to date on all the latest technologies and challenges, servicing their customers while simultaneously wading through a flood of vendor communications to identify and effectively implement the best solutions. On top of all that, customers are demanding more support on AI, a services-driven approach, and help in managing increasingly disperse, and overloaded environments. MSPs have had to adapt their business models and offerings accordingly. A significant part of that evolution requires MSPs to deliver modern ransomware defense. It's a nearly impossible task. Cybercriminals now use AI to attack organizations with massively increased speed, scale, and automation, turning data concerns into an urgent concern in recent years. Almost 90% of IT and security professionals say AI-powered cyberattacks have made them more concerned about the safety of their organization's data, and 62% believe AI will make it more likely their company will need to pay a ransom in the next two or three years. To address this, a new solution is gaining traction among MSPs as a way to build profitable practices and protect their own critical data: immutable backup storage. At DataServ and Object First, we partnered to bring immutable storage into the folds of the MSP model. Here's what we found out. What is immutable storage? Immutable backup storage acts like a digital vault that keeps the data locked inside. Once data is stored, no one can modify it or delete it. That may sound like an obvious no-brainer, but far too many backup storage systems still allow for data to be overwritten by a backup or storage admin, vendor, or - in the worst-case scenario - attacker. Given what AI is capable of these days in terms of deepfakes, you cannot assume anyone trying to access backup data is who they say they are. Therefore, no one - not even the most privileged admin - should be able to make any changes to the data. It's a simple but impactful concept, especially given 96% of ransomware attacks actively target backups. It ensures that should the worst happen and data is lost - from a ransomware attack, insider threat, or just human error - there is always a copy of the company's mission-critical data in the immutable vault, ready to be recovered no matter what. Case study: How a niche technology transformed one MSP's business model. At DataServ, we've seen firsthand how ransomware attacks compromise customer data. As this threat continues to rise, we knew that we needed to shore up our own data center to ensure the data we manage and store for customers remained 100% secure. We couldn't risk a situation where our own data center was attacked, and customer data was lost, with serious reputational and financial repercussions. We work with schools, municipalities, and mission-critical organizations, which makes the data we house especially sensitive and high-value for attackers. The result of implementing immutable backup storage in our own datacenter wasn't just peace of mind; it was 300% faster backups and two-to-three times faster recovery speeds. We immediately recognized that this technology had the potential to be transformative to our business as an external offering as well, given the market is desperate for solutions that provide ransomware defense simply and cheaply. We started recommending immutable backup storage to our customers and were able to successfully build a new revenue stream that runs with minimal oversight from our support staff. This journey started as a search for better in-house backup security, but it evolved into a transformation of our entire service offering. AI is a catalyst for a lot of change in the market, and to stay relevant, MSPs must undergo a similar transformation to update their models and keep pace with new customer demands. In our experience, immutable backup storage is an emerging offering to address customer concerns around advanced cybersecurity threats and differentiate MSPs in a competitive market. ChannelE2E Perspectives columns are written by trusted members of the managed services, value-added reseller, and solution provider channels or ChannelE2E staff. Do you have a unique perspective you want to share? Check out our guidelines here and send a pitch to [email protected]. An in-depth guide to ransomware. Get essential knowledge and practical strategies to protect your organization from ransomware attacks. Bob Evans is a Senior Cloud Engineer at DataServ. Justin Gilbert is the Division Vice President - Microsoft Channel Sales at insightsoftware. He was previously the Head of Channel at Object First.

Object First has launched Fleet Manager, a cloud-based service that simplifies management of distributed backup storage deployments for Veeam environments. The service is available at no additional cost to Ootbi users with active support contracts. Fleet Manager provides a unified dashboard for monitoring multi-cluster deployments, storage utilisation and hardware health across distributed locations. Built on Zero Trust principles, the service monitors only telemetry data and has no access to backup data, ensuring absolute immutability of backups. The platform offers centralised fleet oversight, secure remote access without additional hardware, and multitenant visibility for service providers managing multiple customer environments. Object First, founded to provide ransomware-proof on-premises backup storage, developed the tool to address operational complexity as backup infrastructure becomes increasingly distributed across data centres and locations.