watchTowr Recognized in 2026 Gartner® Emerging Tech: Top Solution Capabilities in Preemptive Cybersecurity

Preemptive Exposure Management gains momentum as organizations confront faster-moving threats

SINGAPORE and LONDON and NEW YORK, June 02, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — watchTowr, the leader in Preemptive Exposure Management, today announced it has been recognized as an Example Vendor in the 2026 Gartner® Emerging Tech: Top Solution Capabilities in Preemptive Cybersecurity report, published April 2026.

As organizations face compressed timelines between vulnerability disclosure and exploitation, driven by the ever-increasing use of AI in cyberattacks, watchTowr believes its Preemptive Exposure Management (PEM) platform redefines how organizations manage and respond to emerging threats. Rather than relying on reactive security assurance activities, PEM enables security teams to continuously identify, validate, and prioritize exploitable exposures before attackers can take advantage of them.

“We hold the view that the Gartner report highlights a clear paradigm shift in industry demand, moving away from reactive cybersecurity to preemptive capabilities designed to disrupt and mitigate threats before exploitation occurs,” said Benjamin Harris, founder and CEO of watchTowr. “And we believe it reinforces what we’ve been building for years: a Preemptive Exposure Management platform that helps security teams understand how they can be impacted right now, validate real exposure, and act before attackers can turn a weakness into a breach.”

In their analysis, Gartner says, “Organizations require preemptive capabilities to effectively defend against rapidly evolving zero-day vulnerabilities, advanced persistent threats, AI-generated polymorphic malware, and devastating ransomware campaigns. By employing techniques that conceal assets, confuse attackers, and forecast likely exploits, preemptive cybersecurity enables organizations to act ahead of potential attacks and maintain resilient operations for uninterrupted business continuity.”

watchTowr’s Preemptive Exposure Management platform is designed to help organizations operationalize PEM by continuously identifying attacker-reachable exposures, validating exploitable risk, and enabling security teams to act before threats escalate into active incidents. Together, watchTowr’s preemptive capabilities are powered by:

• The watchTowr Intel team, which combines telemetry from the Attacker Eye global honeypot network with the watchTowr Instinct AI-powered vulnerability prioritization engine, to help organizations identify the vulnerabilities attackers are most likely to receive in-the-wild exploitation.
• Adversary Sight, which builds visibility like an attacker, mapping an organization’s external attack surface, including internet-exposed assets, shadow IT, SaaS platforms, third parties, and attacker-visible infrastructure.
• Automated Red Teaming capabilities that continuously simulate real-world attacker tactics and techniques to validate and prove the exploitability of identified exposures.
• AI-Driven Rapid Reaction capabilities enable rapid identification and validation of vulnerable systems to emerging threats.
• Active Defense, an autonomous mitigation capability that enables organizations to deploy targeted mitigations while remediation and patching processes are underway.
• watchTowr Labs, an in-house APT group consistently discovering and analyzing zero-days, novel attacker techniques, and internet-wide weaknesses that could impact customer environments before hackers.

“Together, we believe these solutions help organizations validate exploitability, prioritize risk, and mitigate exposure at machine speed, delivering true preemptive cyber capabilities,” added Harris.

The recognition comes on the heels of several other Gartner placements, including recognition in the Gartner Emerging Tech: Top Funded Startups for Preemptive Exposure Management research note, published April 2026; Gartner Market Guide for Adversarial Exposure Validation, published March 2026; and Gartner Emerging Tech: Prioritize Security Risks Smarter with Predictive Threat Intelligence report, published October 2025.

For more information on the 2026 Gartner Emerging Tech: Top Solution Capabilities in Preemptive Cybersecurity report and watchTowr’s analysis, visit: /resources/watchtowr-example-vendor-gartner-preemptive-cybersecurity/.

Gartner®, Emerging Tech: Top Solution Capabilities in Preemptive Cybersecurity, Luis Castillo, Isy Bangurah, David Senf, Elizabeth Kim, Charanpal Bhogal, Travis Lee, Carl Manion, 1 April 2026.

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About watchTowr
watchTowr is the AI-driven Preemptive Exposure Management capability trusted by Fortune 500 companies and critical infrastructure providers. By continuously preempting, validating, and autonomously mitigating emerging threats, watchTowr ensures security teams can always outpace attackers.

When exploitation happens in hours, watchTowr delivers what matters most: time to respond.

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