Recognition reflects a move toward outcome-driven security, with mid-market expectations outpacing traditional MSSP capabilities
Talion, a Managed Security Service Provider (MSSP) with origins in BAE Systems, has been named SME Security Solution Award winner at the Computing Security Excellence Awards 2026, reflecting a broader shift in how cybersecurity effectiveness is being evaluated across the mid-market.
“This recognition reflects a shift the industry can no longer ignore,” said Keven Knight, CEO of Talion. “For too long, cybersecurity has been measured by how much activity it generates rather than how effectively it performs. That’s changing. Organisations are no longer asking how much they can see; they’re asking whether their security will hold when it matters.”
The award comes at a time when mid-market businesses face increasing cyber risk, while many continue to rely on security models that prioritise scale, tooling, and alert volume over real-world performance.
Across the market, a growing number of leadership teams are questioning whether traditional managed security services are delivering meaningful outcomes. In many environments, high volumes of alerts and reporting create an appearance of visibility, yet fail to improve detection accuracy or response capability.
“What we’re seeing across businesses is not a lack of security activity, but a lack of decision clarity when it matters most,” said Keven Knight. “The industry has become highly effective at generating information, but far less effective at enabling confident, accountable decisions under pressure. That disconnect is where risk now sits.”
Industry data reinforces the scale and urgency of the challenge. The World Economic Forum reports that 93% of cyber leaders and 86% of business leaders believe geopolitical instability is likely to lead to a catastrophic cyber event in the near term, highlighting the growing importance of resilience as a core business capability.
At the same time, the International Monetary Fund has identified cyber risk as a potential systemic threat to financial stability, with cyber incidents increasing significantly in both frequency and impact across global markets.
For companies without the scale to absorb disruption, this risk is particularly acute. The challenge is no longer limited to preventing incidents, but to ensuring the ability to respond effectively when they occur.
These organisations operate within increasingly complex digital environments, often without the internal resources required to manage high volumes of alerts, fragmented tooling, and opaque service delivery models. In many cases, security becomes an exercise in activity rather than effectiveness.
A Model Aligned to Performance, Not Activity
Talion’s recognition reflects an approach built around a different premise: that cybersecurity must perform under real-world conditions, not simply generate activity.
“We didn’t set out to refine the traditional MSSP model; we set out to replace it,” said Keven Knight. “Because from the outset, it was clear that scaling activity was not the same as delivering effective security. We built our model around how organisations actually experience risk, not how services are packaged. What’s happening now is the market being forced to recognise that distinction.”
Talion has built its model around enabling CISOs and boards to operate with clarity and confidence under real-world conditions, not simply to observe security activity.
This means delivering an environment where risk can be understood, prioritised, and acted upon as part of ongoing business decision-making. Detection is aligned to real adversary behaviour, visibility is structured to support accountability, and response is designed to enable controlled, timely action rather than reactive escalation.
The result is a model that supports both proactive cybersecurity, through continuous alignment of controls, threat intelligence, and risk posture, and active operational defence, where incidents are managed with clarity, coordination, and measurable impact.
Rather than separating strategy from execution, Talion integrates day-to-day security operations with board-level oversight, ensuring that cybersecurity functions not as a reporting exercise, but as a resilience capability that informs and supports critical decisions across the organisation.
This approach has defined Talion’s model since inception, with a consistent focus on measurable outcomes over visibility. It reflects a standard applied from the outset, one that is now becoming more widely recognised as the industry shifts toward real-world performance.
Recognition That Reflects Investor Strategy
Talion’s growth, supported by strategic investment from Mercia Asset Management and Crown Commercial Service, has been focused on addressing a structural gap in how cybersecurity is delivered to the SME sector, where risk exposure has increased, but access to effective, outcome-driven security has remained limited.
“This was never about expanding existing models,” said Keven Knight. “Because those models were not designed for the environments they’re now expected to protect.
We built something fundamentally different; security aligned to how business environments actually operate, where decisions need to be made quickly, with clarity, and with accountability. For many SMEs, the challenge isn’t awareness of risk, it’s the ability to act on it with confidence.
This recognition reflects that direction. It recognises a model designed around real-world conditions, not service delivery efficiency, and a standard that is now becoming increasingly difficult for the rest of the market to ignore.”
The SME sector represents a critical component of economic activity, yet continues to face disproportionate cyber risk. According to the UK Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, 50% of UK businesses, and more than 70% of medium-sized organisations, reported a cyber breach or attack in the past year, highlighting the scale and frequency of exposure.
At the same time, research from the Federation of Small Businesses estimates that SMEs experience millions of cyber incidents annually, often without the internal capability required to respond effectively.
In this context, the challenge is not only the volume of attacks, but the ability of leadership teams to detect, prioritise, and respond with clarity under pressure, something many traditional security models were never designed to support.
Against this backdrop, the need for outcome-driven cybersecurity is not optional, it is essential.
A Clearer Standard for Cybersecurity
This recognition reflects a broader shift already underway across the market.
At a time when many providers continue to optimise for activity, Talion has focused on building a model designed to deliver performance in real-world conditions.
“What we’re seeing now is that the expectations of mid-market businesses are evolving faster than many security providers can adapt,” said Keven Knight. “For a long time, the industry focused on scaling services, but not necessarily on tailoring them to how organisations actually operate. That gap is becoming increasingly visible.
The reality is that the needs of mid-market companies have outpaced the way most cybersecurity services are designed. Many providers are still optimising for scale and activity, while security leaders are asking for clarity, control, and performance.
We built our model around those real-world conditions from the outset. What’s changing now is not our approach, it’s the market starting to recognise what actually works, and which models can genuinely deliver resilience under pressure.”
For organisations evaluating cybersecurity providers, the implications are becoming increasingly clear. The market is no longer defined by who can generate the most alerts, deploy the most tooling, or present the broadest coverage.
It is defined by who can deliver clarity, control, and effective response at the point of decision. This recognition reflects that shift and signals where the standard for cybersecurity is now being set. This level of security intelligence is what leadership teams and boards are beginning to expect and the standard the market will increasingly be measured against.”
About Talion Cybersecurity
Talion is a UK-based cybersecurity company specialising in governance-aligned Security Operations Centre (SOC) services for organisations operating in regulated and high-risk environments. Through its hybrid and Agentic SOC model, Talion integrates advanced automation, human expertise, and executive visibility to ensure cyber defence operates in direct alignment with board-level accountability. The company has received industry recognition, including the SME Security Solution Award at the Computing Security Excellence Awards, reflecting the effectiveness of its resilience-led approach in real-world conditions.
Founded on the principle that effective security cannot exist in isolation from leadership oversight, Talion embeds operational transparency and structural accountability into its service design. The company partners with organisations across critical sectors to deliver operational precision, strategic clarity, and sustained resilience in an evolving threat landscape enabling CISOs and boards to make confident, informed decisions under pressure.
By combining technical depth with governance alignment, Talion supports boards and executive teams in strengthening cyber risk oversight while maintaining the agility required to respond to emerging threats. This approach has defined Talion’s model since inception, with a consistent focus on measurable outcomes over visibility, and is increasingly recognised as the standard for effective cybersecurity performance.