This award recognizes a security practitioner or team that demonstrates outstanding oversight of an innovative security awareness program. Award nominations will be considered from security practitioners.

Dawn McCarty is a vanguard in security awareness with over 20 years in information and cyber security experience. She has received four academic degrees, including an MBA in Cybersecurity, and she is a globally recognized cybersecurity professional and cyberologist.

Dawn has worked with corporate giants like IBM, Disney, and the Department of Energy, and has shared her unique security awareness training with everyone from individuals to a Fortune 5 organization. Her corporate successes are indisputable, where Dawn is the brains behind a proprietary patch governance framework and committee, the co-creator of a patented self-service remediation tool, that was responsible for safeguarding millions of protected data files, successfully reducing the vulnerability risk for organizations she’s worked for.

Dawn’s global impact on her unique method for security awareness is unmatched, with her advocacy and training reaching over 28 countries, both virtually and in person, she is on a mission to educate and mobilize the largest global army, the general public, enabling them the be the first line of defense against cybercrime.