Pikered listed as a Sample Vendor for the Adversarial Exposure Validationcategory in the Gartner® Hype Cycle™ for Security Operations, 2026.
Why we believe Adversarial Exposure Validation matters
Security teams are increasingly judged not by the tools they own, but by how those tools hold up when someone attacks them. Adversarial Exposure Validation answers that question head on: it reproduces real attacker behavior and checks, continuously, whether the defenses already in place actually stop it. We believe our inclusion in this Hype Cycle reflects how central that shift has become to the way security operations are run today.
According to Gartner, “Adversarial exposure validation (AEV) provides consistent, continuous and automated empirical evidence of the feasibility and impact of an attack.”
This is the principle ZAIUX Evo was built on. Through a Command and Control architecture, it reproduces an end-to-end intrusion the way a skilled attacker would run it, then reports back with no agents, no firewall exclusions, and no false positives. In our view, that hands security teams something they can act on immediately: a clear map of the routes an attacker could genuinely take, evidence of how existing controls respond, and a remediation order set by real risk rather than theoretical severity.
Gartner, Hype Cycle for Security Operations, 2026, Darren Livingstone, Jonathan Nunez, 5 June 2026.
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Realistic
Runs against your live environment under real conditions, with no exclusion rules and no traffic that would tip off the very defenses it is testing.
Agentless
The First Stage package behaves like genuine malware and clears itself away afterwards. Nothing is installed on endpoints and no probes are left behind.
No false positives
Surfaces only the weaknesses a capable attacker could actually exploit, each one ranked and paired with a concrete fix, delivered within 24 hours.
“We hold the view that beignrecognized in this Hype Cycle, just three years after bringing ZAIUX Evo to market, tells us the path we chose was the right one. We truly feel, the credit belongs to a team that turns an ambitious idea into a product able to compete internationally, day after day. For us this is not a destination but a reason to keep raising our sights.”
Marco Gallina, Managing Director, Pikered
Ready to strengthen your security posture?
Contact us and learn how Adversarial Exposure Validation can support your organization.