Altius Inspiro wins consecutive Fortress Cybersecurity Award
Altius Inspiro has won the 2026 Fortress Cybersecurity Award in the Network Security category from the Business Intelligence Group, picking up the accolade for the second year running. The Manila-headquartered business process services provider says the recognition follows a 12-month security transformation that retired legacy perimeter defences in favour of a cloud-delivered SASE and Zero Trust architecture.
The company reports two headline metrics from the programme: a phishing click rate reduced from 15% to 0%, and a 92% improvement in mean time to identify (MTTI). No independent verification of those figures was cited in the release, and no third-party auditor or certification body was named to corroborate the results.
AI as a force multiplier
Beyond the network rebuild, Inspiro says it is now pursuing a "governed" approach to AI-augmented security operations. The stated premise is that attackers already operate at machine speed while many defenders remain constrained by human-speed workflows. Rather than deploying AI as a wholesale replacement for analysts, the company says it is evaluating tools against three criteria: measurable value, operational usefulness, and governance across both security and data-privacy dimensions.
Ryo Ohashi, President and CEO of Altius Inspiro, said the company intends to "lead that shift responsibly," building resilience that protects clients and partners beyond today's threat landscape. Russ Fordyce, Chief Recognition Officer at the Business Intelligence Group, said Inspiro's approach "reflects where the market is headed: practical cybersecurity that solves real problems."
The release does not name specific AI vendors under evaluation, detail the tooling already deployed, or quantify the projected improvement in detection or response times from AI augmentation.
Market context
The SASE market has consolidated rapidly over the past two years, with Palo Alto Networks, Zscaler, Netskope and Cloudflare competing alongside established networking vendors that have added security service edge capabilities. For BPS and CX outsourcers, which handle sensitive customer data on behalf of Fortune 1000 clients, demonstrable network security posture is increasingly a procurement qualifier rather than a differentiator. Buyers in regulated verticals, particularly financial services and healthcare, routinely require SOC 2 Type II attestation and ISO 27001 certification as baseline conditions.
The Fortress Cybersecurity Award is administered by the Business Intelligence Group, a commercial recognition programme rather than a standards body or independent certification authority. Buyers should treat the award as indicative of internal investment rather than as an external compliance certification.
Zero Trust adoption across large outsourcers has also attracted scrutiny from regulators. The EU's NIS2 Directive, which came into force in October 2024, and the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA), applicable from January 2025, both impose mandatory incident-reporting and resilience-testing obligations on entities operating within European regulated supply chains. Altius Inspiro has not disclosed whether its European client engagements fall within scope of either framework.
The company is a subsidiary of Altius Link, Inc., backed by KDDI Corporation and Mitsui and Co. Its next visible milestone will be whether it publishes independently verified security certifications to support the metrics claimed in this release.