Meet the hottest security vendors on the planet

IT security research body Cybersecurity Ventures has released the second annual Cybersecurity 500 list of the top security companies in the world.

The research firm ranks the security industry based on innovation, rather than size or revenue.

The list was dominated by US companies, with Colorado-based consulting firm Root9B topping the list, followed by Lancope, AlienVault, Dell SecureWorks and IBM Security.

The highest ranking non-US company was AVG Technologies, headquartered in The Netherlands. Last year’s winner FireEye came in seventh.

Three Aussie businesses managed to make this years’ list, one more than last year.

[The full 2016 Cybersecurity 500 list]

Data protection vendor StratoKey was the highest-ranking Australian company, placing 71st overall. The Tasmanian-based company had a huge 2015 highlighted by its expansion into the US.

StratoKey’s flagship product is a cloud data protection solution that acts as an encryption gateway to the cloud. It intercepts communications between users and cloud software-as-a-service applications to encrypt private content.

This also provides real-time monitoring and behavioural analytics on users for threat detection.

Last year, StratoKey expanded into the US, and now as a sales team in Texas as well as a new partner program.

Chief executive Anthony Scotney noted that his company was one of the few vendors writing security software in Australia.

"We have a complete solution in the CASB [cloud access security broker], some of our competitors don’t have the complete suite," said Scotney.

"The company started off doing this, we didn’t pick up a report and start trying to implement this."

Canberra’s QuintessenceLabs made the list for the second time, maintaining its 231st ranking. QuintessenceLabs claims to be the world's first vendor to "harness the quantum properties of lasers" to deliver cryptography.

Sydney’s Wontok came in at 305th for its anti-malware solutions. Wontok’s technology tackles malware at kernel level to intercept and protect any system.