Cyber Defense Magazine announced the 10 winners of its 2019 Black Unicorn Awards, chosen from among 100 accepted nominations, and three of them are Israeli companies.

The Black Unicorn Awards, announced August 6 in Las Vegas at Black Hat USA 2019, recognize cybersecurity companies with current and future potential to reach $1 billion market valuation. In the venture capital industry, a “unicorn” refers to a tech startup valued at $1 billion or more as determined by private or public investment.

The three Israeli awardees are Checkmarx of Ramat Gan, which also earned a June 2019 Gartner Peer Insights Customers’ Choice Award for Application Security Testing; Herzliya-headquartered XM Cyber, previously recognized as a “Technology Pioneer” by the World Economic Forum; and ObserveIT of Tel Aviv and Boston.

Judges for the Black Unicorn Awards — industry experts Gary Miliefsky of Cyber Defense Media Group, Robert Herjavec of Herjavec Group and David DeWalt of NightDragon – said they evaluated finalists on the basis of their “team, technology, drive and hypergrowth curve.”