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10 Cybersecurity Marketing Leaders to Follow in 2026

Cybersecurity might be the hardest thing in B2B to market. The buyer is technical and skeptical, the category is crowded with companies whose booths, palettes, and taglines all blur together, and the product is complex enough that most messaging retreats into jargon. The marketing leaders below do the opposite. They build brands people actually recognize, run original threat research the whole industry quotes, and create categories instead of chasing them. Here are ten cybersecurity marketing leaders worth following in 2026.

How we picked this list. Every leader here (a) currently runs marketing at a cybersecurity company, (b) is building the brand in a competitive, still-growing company rather than resting on decades of name recognition, and (c) has something real to point to: category creation, original research, a brand breakthrough, or growth numbers that back up the reputation. No pay-to-play, and no points for a title without the work behind it. Loosely grouped by what they do, not ranked.

Wendy Wu / SailPoint

Chief Marketing Officer

Why she's on this list. Identity security is one of the least glamorous corners of cyber to market, and SailPoint sells it to some of the most skeptical buyers in the enterprise. Wu, who came up through Box, Google, and Microsoft, leans on primary research with the exact identity decision-makers SailPoint sells to, then turns it into a flagship report that arms the sales team and pulls in demand.

The receipts. SailPoint's annual Horizons of Identity Security report, now in its fourth year, is built on a survey of 375 identity decision-makers across the Americas, Europe, and Asia. The latest edition, which found identity security delivers roughly twice the ROI of other security domains, anchors SailPoint's Navigate events worldwide and hands every rep a data-backed proof point. SailPoint returned to the public markets in 2025.

The takeaway. In a category buyers find dry, original research is what earns attention. Ask the market what it thinks, publish it, and the brand starts doing the selling.

Sources: SailPoint Horizons of Identity Security 2025-2026 (sailpoint.com); SailPoint 2025 IPO coverage

Colton Pond / Socure

Chief Marketing Officer

Why he's on this list. Socure sells identity verification and fraud prevention, a category where trust is the entire product. Pond, who joined in 2026 after building a name in fintech marketing, treats digital trust as the story: as he puts it, digital trust is the first casualty of the AI era, and identity decisions sit at the center of every human, business, and bot interaction.

The receipts. Socure runs its RiskOS platform for more than 3,000 customers, including 18 of the top 20 banks and names like Capital One, Chime, SoFi, and Robinhood, while sustaining 50%+ year-over-year growth. Pond previously drove 300% revenue growth at Truv and, at LoanPro, turned a customer conference into an event the industry nicknamed Fintech Burning Man.

The takeaway. When the product is trust, marketing's job is to make an abstract idea feel concrete and urgent. Pond does it by naming the stakes, not the features.

Sources: Socure executive announcement, March 2026 (businesswire.com); Socure company data

Scott Holden / Vanta

Chief Marketing Officer

Why he's on this list. Vanta's category exists because buyers stopped accepting a once-a-year audit as proof of trust. Holden, who joined from Brex in 2025, built the go-to-market around that shift, meeting demand where it moved rather than where compliance marketing used to sit.

The receipts. Vanta crossed $300 million in ARR in spring 2026, roughly tripling in two years, serves more than 16,000 customers, and has reportedly kept net revenue retention above 100% by expanding inside accounts as customer needs grow.

The takeaway. Build the brand around what buyers are actually demanding now, and growth compounds from inside the customer base.

Sources: Fortune, Vanta $300M ARR (2026); Vanta company blog

Ash Parikh / Absolute Security

Chief Marketing Officer

Why he's on this list. Absolute plays in cyber resilience, the unglamorous promise that when everything else fails, your endpoints and controls come back. Parikh, who took the CMO seat in 2025 after 25 years in cybersecurity and enterprise software marketing, owns the job of making resilience a story buyers care about before an incident, not after one.

The receipts. Absolute's technology is embedded in the firmware of hundreds of millions of devices, a distribution advantage few security vendors can claim, and Parikh oversees the global brand, demand generation, product marketing, and communications built on top of it.

The takeaway. Resilience is a hard sell until something breaks. The marketing challenge is making the value obvious while everything still works.

Sources: Absolute Security CMO appointment, August 2025 (businesswire.com); Absolute Security newsroom

Dan Larson / Arctic Wolf

Chief Marketing Officer

Why he's on this list. Security operations is a noisy category, and Arctic Wolf broke through by pairing a strong brand with research the whole industry cites. Larson oversees the full marketing engine and leans on Arctic Wolf's threat research to earn attention rather than buy all of it.

The receipts. The annual Arctic Wolf Threat Report, whose 2026 edition flagged an 11x jump in data extortion incidents, gets quoted across the trade press. Arctic Wolf posted eight consecutive years of 100% sales growth through 2021, was named a Fast Company Most Innovative Company in 2022, and has expanded through acquisitions including Tetra Defense and Sevco Security.

The takeaway. Original threat data is a cybersecurity marketer's best earned-media asset. Publish something the industry has to reference, and you become part of the conversation.

Sources: Arctic Wolf 2026 Threat Report; Arctic Wolf press releases and leadership page

Scott Hogrefe / Netskope

Chief Marketing Officer

Why he's on this list. Netskope competes in a crowded cloud and network security market against much larger incumbents. Hogrefe, promoted to CMO in 2024 after years building the brand from the inside, has helped position Netskope as the authority on how enterprises actually use cloud and AI, not just another logo in the SASE race.

The receipts. Netskope went public in 2025 and reported $811 million in ARR, up 31% year over year, with record net new ARR in its most recent quarter. Netskope Threat Labs research feeds a steady stream of content behind the company's positioning as a definitive source on enterprise AI and cloud data trends.

The takeaway. Against bigger competitors, owning one specific piece of authority beats trying to outspend them everywhere.

Sources: Netskope Q4 FY2026 earnings; Netskope Threat Labs

Liz Kokoska / Huntress

Chief Marketing Officer

Why she's on this list. Huntress markets enterprise-grade security to small and mid-sized businesses and the MSPs that serve them, an audience most cyber vendors ignore or talk down to. Kokoska, who joined as CMO in 2025 after a run through Okta and Wiz, leads a brand that treats that underserved segment as the hero of the story.

The receipts. Huntress publishes widely-read threat research aimed squarely at the SMB world, has built one of the more community-driven brands in security, and is backed by investors including JMI Equity, Sapphire, and Meritech as it scales.

The takeaway. Serving an overlooked segment with genuine respect is its own marketing strategy. The brand that shows up for the underdog earns loyalty the incumbents can't buy.

Sources: Huntress leadership announcements; Huntress threat research (huntress.com)

Matt Fairbanks / Island

Chief Marketing Officer

Why he's on this list. Island did something rare in security: it pioneered a category, the enterprise browser, rather than fighting for share in an existing one. Fairbanks, who joined as CMO in 2023 after leading marketing at Sophos, owns the harder half of category creation, teaching the market that something it never knew it needed should now be a line item.

The receipts. Island's enterprise browser went from a novel idea to one of the fastest-growing stories in security, backed by later-stage financing at a multibillion-dollar valuation and adoption across industries and segments.

The takeaway. Category creation is the highest-difficulty move in marketing. Pull it off and you stop competing on the market's terms and start setting them.

Sources: Island CMO announcement, November 2023 (island.io); Island funding coverage

Liz Egan / Chainguard

Chief Marketing Officer

Why she's on this list. Chainguard sells trust in the software supply chain, an abstract problem most engineers feel but few buy for until an incident forces the issue. Egan, who stepped into the CMO role in 2025 after leading marketing at Lattice, gives that abstract problem a clear, human voice. The company's own refrain is that this work is genuinely hard, and it says so out loud.

The receipts. Chainguard has more than doubled headcount over the past year, added new product lines, landed on the Forbes Cloud 100, and earned Great Place to Work recognition, all while building a brand around being the trusted source for open source software.

The takeaway. Honesty is a positioning choice. Saying the hard thing plainly, instead of dressing it in enterprise gloss, is what makes a technical brand sound human.

Sources: Chainguard newsroom (chainguard.dev); Forbes Cloud 100 2025

Aygun Suleymanova / Cyera

Chief Brand Officer

Why she's on this list. Cyera is one of the fastest-growing companies in security, and brand is a big reason a data security startup founded in 2021 already sounds like an incumbent. Suleymanova, who led AI product marketing at Salesforce and marketing at companies including Datadog and Sanity before joining Cyera, owns the brand at a company trying to define data security for the AI era rather than just compete in it.

The receipts. Cyera has posted more than 400% year-over-year growth, serves enterprises like AT&T, DocuSign, and Paramount, and has raised from top-tier investors at a multibillion-dollar valuation, while standing up its own Cyera Research Labs to fuel original data-security content.

The takeaway. Brand is what makes a young company sound inevitable. The fastest-growing names in security invest in it early, not after they have already won.

Sources: Cyera leadership page (cyera.com); Cyera growth and funding coverage

One pattern runs through this whole list.

The brands that break through in security do it by publishing original research the industry has to quote, not by outspending everyone on ads. That is the entire thesis behind Gather: turn what your buyers actually think into research, and let the research do the selling.

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