NEC Asia Pacific has won the Rising Star Award in the managed cybersecurity services category of the CybersecAsia Readers' Choice Awards, decided by a vote of the publication's subscribers and readers — described by the organiser as chief information security officers, technology heads and practitioners in end-user organisations.

The category is aimed at providers that have entered the regional market relatively recently and are expected to become useful partners to buyers. The release says NEC Asia Pacific's managed services cover hybrid cloud security monitoring, threat visibility and intelligence, application programming interface security, and security work inside software development pipelines.

The difference between a vote and a measurement

An award decided by readers measures visibility and reputation. It does not measure whether a managed service detects threats faster, or handles an incident more cleanly, than a competitor's. Those are the questions a buyer is actually asking, and a ballot is not evidence about any of them.

What the announcement does supply is a list of capabilities, which is at least specific. Hybrid cloud monitoring and API security are real operational problems, and a provider that names them has told a reader what it sells. Job Chan, who heads the regional managed services group at NEC Asia Pacific, described the win as reflecting what the industry sees in the firm; Victor Ng, the publication's editor-in-chief, said the company had grown its security portfolio quickly and was worth watching. A reader weighing a contract still needs the things no award provides: service levels, references, and the price of the entry tier. The capability list is worth more than the trophy, because a buyer can hold it against their own environment and ask which parts are included and which cost extra.