KYND Named Among World’s Top AI FinTech Companies for Second Year Running

Cyber risk analytics provider KYND has been named in the AIFinTech100 2026 list, highlighting the growing importance of AI-powered cyber intelligence in insurance.

Artificial intelligence continues to reshape the financial services sector, but industry experts increasingly agree that success depends not just on powerful AI tools, but on the quality of the data that powers them.

That principle has helped cyber risk analytics specialist KYND secure a place in the prestigious AIFinTech100 list for the second consecutive year, reinforcing its growing reputation within the insurance sector.

Published annually by FinTech Global, the AIFinTech100 recognises the world's most innovative companies applying artificial intelligence across financial services. The 2026 edition was the most competitive yet, with more than 2,000 companies assessed by industry experts and analysts before the final 100 were selected.

For insurers, brokers and reinsurers, the recognition highlights the increasing importance of reliable cyber risk intelligence in an era where AI is transforming underwriting, portfolio management and risk assessment.

KYND provides insurers with a continuously updated view of an organisation's cyber risk exposure, helping decision-makers move beyond traditional point-in-time assessments and static risk scores. Its platform combines proprietary technology, cyber security expertise and ongoing exposure monitoring to provide insights into organisations ranging from global enterprises to small and medium-sized businesses.

According to KYND Co-founder Melanie Hayes, the award reflects the growing role of cyber intelligence within modern insurance operations.

She noted that while AI is helping insurers analyse risks more quickly and efficiently, the effectiveness of those systems ultimately depends on the quality and accuracy of the intelligence underpinning them. By delivering a real-world view of cyber exposure, KYND enables insurance professionals to make more informed decisions at both individual risk and portfolio levels.

The wider financial services industry is also evolving rapidly. Richard Sachar, CEO of FinTech Global, said the focus of AI adoption has shifted from experimentation to practical implementation. Financial institutions are increasingly looking for solutions that deliver measurable value across areas such as fraud prevention, customer experience, risk management, automation and insurance operations.

The recognition also comes at a time when AI itself is creating new challenges for insurers. From AI-assisted cyber attacks and faster vulnerability exploitation to emerging questions around AI liability, the risk landscape is becoming increasingly complex.

As insurers look to develop the next generation of cyber insurance products, companies such as KYND are helping the market gain greater visibility into emerging threats and opportunities. That intelligence could prove vital in supporting profitable and sustainable growth in the years ahead.

https://www.kynd.io/uk

Resilient Organisations Practise Until Response Becomes Routine, Says Horizon3.ai

Dan Bird MBE, Field Chief Technology Officer (EMEA) at Horizon3.ai, highlights why cyber resilience must move beyond policy and toward continuous operational rehearsal, reinforcing insights from co-founder and CEO Snehal Antani.

Cyber resilience is often framed as a new challenge driven by modern threats, yet many of its core lessons were already solved decades ago in disaster recovery. 

According to Dan Bird MBE, Field Chief Technology Officer (EMEA) at cybersecurity company Horizon3.ai, resilient organisations succeed not through static defence models but through continuous rehearsal and validation, an approach strongly echoed by Horizon3.ai co-founder and CEO Snehal Antani.

Bird points to a growing gap between policy and real-world readiness. Horizon3.ai, regarded as one of the leading providers of offensive security, promotes an approach in which organisations test their own IT environments through continuous penetration testing to uncover potential weaknesses that cybercriminals could exploit. Rather than solely relying on passive layers of defence, organisations can safely hack themselves, fix their issues, validate their fixes, and repeat the process as often as they like.

Parallels between cyber resilience and high availability systems

Drawing on Antani’s comparison between cyber resilience and business continuity, Bird emphasises that resilience is not a theoretical concept but an operational discipline. In high availability environments, downtime is not acceptable and failures are anticipated rather than avoided. 

Systems are intentionally failed over from one data centre to another to prove recovery works, building the kind of repetition and accountability that creates “muscle memory” within teams.

This model of continuous rehearsal for real events aligns closely with offensive security principles and reflects what both Antani and Bird see as the most effective modern response to escalating cyber threats. Instead of viewing cyber resilience as a tooling or reporting exercise, Horizon3.ai argues that organisations must treat it as an operational challenge: systems fail, attackers exploit weaknesses, and businesses must recover under pressure. “Customers expect availability, and regulators demand accountability,” Bird told That's Business. 

Resilient organisations practise until action becomes routine

Bird reinforces Antani’s view that resilient organisations should assume something will go wrong and actively look for weak points before attackers do. “Resilience means rehearsing response and recovery until execution becomes routine, whereas many organisations still rely on assumptions,” he explained. “Defence and recovery plans may appear strong on paper but often fail in practice when testing is missing.”

In real incidents, he notes, operational failures and malicious activity can appear indistinguishable at first. Service restoration cannot wait for perfect attribution. 

Disaster recovery and cybersecurity converge, requiring teams that have rehearsed together rather than siloed plans that have never been exercised under pressure. The challenge, Antani has argued, is rarely tooling alone but often process and leadership.

One penetration test a year is far too little

Both leaders highlight the limits of traditional annual penetration testing in environments that change constantly. 

Risks evolve faster than yearly cycles can capture, with patches arriving weekly, configurations shifting and cloud and identity architectures continuously developing. Without regular security validation, organisations risk making decisions based on outdated assumptions.

Bird emphasises that continuous testing tied closely to change creates the feedback loops organisations need. Regular pentests following patch cycles help teams validate whether improvements actually reduce risk, moving security toward continuous improvement rather than periodic assessment.

A new phase of cybersecurity driven by artificial intelligence

As Antani has observed, cybersecurity has entered a phase where speed matters more than ever. AI-driven attacks compress timelines, meaning organisations must rely on trained muscle memory rather than reactive decision-making. 

From Bird’s perspective, the lesson is clear: “Under pressure, teams fall back on training, not expectations. Continuous rehearsal, combined with leadership commitment, determines performance.”

https://horizon3.ai

Follow them here:-

http://www.linkedin.com/company/horizon3ai

https://x.com/Horizon3ai

Infinigate UKI and OpenOrigins Partner to bring verifiable media authentication to the UK&I channel

Justin Griffiths

Infinigate UK & Ireland, the value-added distributor specialising in cybersecurity, secure networks and secure cloud has today announced a new vendor partnership with OpenOrigins, a decentralised authentication platform designed to verify the authenticity of digital media and help organisations combat deepfakes and AI-generated content.

The partnership will initially focus on UK & Ireland, enabling Infinigate’s channel community to address an urgent and fast-growing challenge around establishing trust in the images and videos used across their organisation.

Industry analysts expect deepfakes to become mainstream in 2026, with the threat shifting from reputational damage to direct financial gain by criminals. 

As a result, organisations are increasing their investment in deepfake detection technologies, with spending predicted to rise by 40% in 2026 across industries and use cases. (forrester.com)

For channel partners, OpenOrigins opens up a practical, high-value conversation across a broad set of use cases, including:

Corporate communications and brand protection

Fraud prevention and evidential integrity workflows

Media and content production

Identity and trust assurance scenarios where visual proof matters

Ari Abelson, Co-Founder & Chief Strategy Officer at OpenOrigins, told That's Business: “Safeguarding non-synthetic content by establishing provable provenance has become essential to protect businesses from corporate fraud.

"OpenOrigins’ approach overcomes the limitations of AI detectors and other reactive solutions that are no longer able to meet the escalating challenge. Partnering with a cybersecurity specialist such as Infinigate fits perfectly with our intent to build trust and security back into the Internet."

Justin Griffiths, RVP Infinigate UK&I, added: “OpenOrigins brings a smart and absolutely dependable way to protect data integrity at a time when authenticity is becoming a board-level concern. Together, we’ll help our partners take a provenance-led approach to trusted media, backed by the enablement, technical support and route-to-market services they expect from Infinigate, while unlocking new growth opportunities.”

FACTFILE:

The Infinigate Group, the leading technology platform and trusted advisor in Cybersecurity, Cloud & Network Infrastructure sets itself apart for its deep technical expertise, delivering locally tailored solutions and services to SMB and enterprise customers across EMEA and ANZ. Relying on a strong central supply chain and an extensive portfolio of leading-edge solutions, Infinigate sparks growth for vendor and channel partners.

For additional information please visit www.infinigate.com

OpenOrigins is building the trust layer for the internet, giving authentic people and media a permanent, verifiable path in the AI-driven internet. Powered by Cambium, a novel Internet-scale provenance protocol, we enable any digital asset to prove its origin independently of custody, distribution, or storage. This ensures authenticity persists wherever data travels across the digital world. For more information, please visit https://www.openorigins.com.

Only 8% Of Organisations Have AI Governance - QA Launches New Learning Paths To Close The Gap

QA Ltd, the UK’s largest tech training provider, has announced the launch of a new suite of AI learning paths, designed to help businesses adopt AI quickly, without compromising security and compliance.

Recent findings reveal that only 8% of organisations have fully embedded AI governance, while 80% of enterprise AI failures stem from poor cross-functional coordination. QA’s new learning paths aim to close both of these critical capability gaps.

Speed matters, but AI safety is non-negotiable

Many businesses are facing a critical challenge: how to expand AI adoption responsibly. This launch addresses the growing concerns around fragmented AI implementation, siloed skills, and governance bottlenecks.

“In the race to adopt AI, speed matters. But safety is non-negotiable,” Richard Beck, QA’s Portfolio Director for Cyber Security told That's Business. 

“Our training pathways are built to ensure organisations don’t have to choose between AI innovation and governance - they can have both. Not in opposition, but in a mutually empowering way.”

AI learning pathways designed for real-world impact

QA's pathways have been created by AI and cyber security experts and are designed to help organisations adopt artificial intelligence at speed. The training programmes on offer include: 

Certifications aligned with global AI frameworks including ISO, NIST, and the EU AI Act

Expert-led training and simulations for real-world impact

A cross-functional training approach, to unify business, legal, and technical teams

These pathways are designed to tackle today's most pressing AI-related business challenges head-on. They provide role-based training that gives teams the skills to deploy AI securely and confidently, while recognising the wide range of departments involved in adoption.

Training is available for both technical specialists, including cyber security and software engineering, and non-technical teams such as compliance officers and business leaders.

QA’s approach aims to ensure that every function is an enabler of safe, scalable AI adoption – not a blocker.

Learn more by visiting - www.qa.com/ai-speed-and-safety