Ontinue Recognized as Microsoft Security Excellence Awards Finalist for Security Trailblazer

Ontinue, a leading provider of agentic AI-powered managed extended detection and response (MXDR) services and winner of the 2023 Microsoft Security Services Innovator of the Year award, announced it has been named a Finalist in the 2025 Microsoft Security Excellence Awards in the highly selective Security Trailblazer category. This recognition honors Ontinue’s leadership in helping modernize and accelerate security outcomes for Microsoft Security customers worldwide.

The Microsoft Security Excellence Awards honor partners across multiple categories for exceptional product innovation, customer impact, operational excellence, and community leadership. Finalists represent the top-performing members of the Microsoft Intelligent Security Association (MISA), a trusted ecosystem of cybersecurity partners who integrate their solutions with Microsoft to strengthen the collective defense of organizations worldwide. The Security Trailblazer distinction is awarded to partners who demonstrate breakthrough innovation and measurable customer impact across the Microsoft security ecosystem. Ontinue’s finalist placement underscores its role in advancing managed security operations for organizations operating on Microsoft Sentinel, Microsoft Defender, Entra, and the broader Microsoft Security stack.

“Being recognized as a Security Trailblazer finalist is a powerful validation of how productively Ontinue is working with Microsoft to reshape security operations through the application of Agentic AI,” said Geoff Haydon, CEO of Ontinue. “Ontinue’s differentiated approach, through our AI powered ION platform, is enabling customers to achieve faster outcomes, improved resilience, and greater value from their Microsoft Security platform investments. We’re leading the industry with a new SecOps where AI doesn’t just accelerate work, it elevates what’s possible.”

Ontinue continues to deliver industry-first innovation through its ION MXDR platform, which augments human experts with agentic AI and automation to contain threats fast and continuously strengthen customer security postures. At the beginning of 2025 Ontinue introduced its Autonomous Investigator agent, which has reduced the mean time to respond to incidents by 55% this year while enabling Ontinue’s SOC to resolve 99.5% of all incidents on behalf of customers, reducing the burden on internal customer security teams. In September, Ontinue released its first version of a Posture Advisor agent built on Microsoft Security Copilot. The Posture Advisor agent audits Entra security policies and provides tailored recommendations to harden a customer’s environment against identity-based attacks.

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At the Microsoft Security Excellence Awards on January 26, 2026, Microsoft will celebrate finalists in 6 award categories honoring partner trailblazers, solution innovators, customer and technology champions, and changemakers. This is the sixth year Microsoft is recognizing partners for their outstanding work in the security landscape. All finalists are members of the Microsoft Intelligent Security Association (MISA), an ecosystem of leading security vendors comprised of software development companies and services partners that have integrated their security products and services with Microsoft’s security technology.

MISA was established to bring together Microsoft leaders, software development companies and services partners to work together to defeat security threats and make the world a safer place. The industry veterans in MISA and Microsoft will vote to select the winners of the Microsoft Security Excellence Awards, providing an opportunity for colleagues to honor their peers for delivering exceptional work to our shared customers.