San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose, California--(Newsfile Corp. - August 18, 2026) - Harsh Verma, Principal Software Engineer for Artificial Intelligence at Palo Alto Networks, has received two recognitions at the 2026 Cybersecurity Excellence Awards, including AI Security Innovator of the Year, selected by an independent jury of cybersecurity practitioners, analysts, and CISOs and Community Choice Winner in AI cybersecurity based on community influence. The 2026 Cybersecurity Excellence Awards team recently announced Harsh Verma, Principal Software Engineer for AI, at Palo Alto Networks wins dual recognition at the Cybersecurity Excellence Awards, one of the most established global recognition programmes in the cybersecurity industry. Verma was recognised in the AI Security Innovator of the Year category, selected by an independent jury of cybersecurity practitioners, analysts, and CISOs, and was additionally named a 2026 Community Choice Winner in the same category, determined by community voting across a programme that received 79,455 eligible votes during the 2026 awards season. The Cybersecurity Excellence Awards are presented by Cybersecurity Insiders, the trusted platform for CISO insight and strategic research, and are backed by a community of over 600,000 security professionals. The programme has recognised achievement across the cybersecurity community for more than a decade. "We congratulate Harsh Verma for outstanding achievements in the AI Security Innovator of the Year category of the 2026 Cybersecurity Excellence Awards," said Holger Schulze, founder of Cybersecurity Insiders and organiser of the Cybersecurity Excellence Awards. "Selected by an independent jury of cybersecurity practitioners, analysts, and CISOs, this recognition highlights meaningful contributions that strengthen cybersecurity across organisations worldwide." The Work Behind the Recognition Verma's recognition reflects his work at Palo Alto Networks at the intersection of artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and autonomous agent architectures. His contributions focus on how modern enterprises can evolve toward real-time, self-directed security systems through agentic AI, accelerating the industry's shift