Anthropic expands cyber verification program with new access tiers

Anthropic has expanded its Cyber Verification Program (CVP), restructuring it into three access tiers that allow security professionals to apply for varying levels of access to the company's AI models, including Claude Opus 5.5, Claude Sonnet 5.5, and Claude Mythos 5.1.

The three tiers — Defense Access, Red Team Access, and Specialized Access — each carry different verification requirements and security controls. Defense Access targets organizations performing defensive cybersecurity work such as incident response, malware analysis, and vulnerability validation. Red Team Access adds authorized penetration testing capabilities but restricts use to systems organizations are permitted to test. Specialized Access, which has the fewest restrictions, is reserved for organizations authorized to test critical safety systems such as power grids, flight operating systems, and interbank transfer infrastructure, and is currently reviewed in collaboration with the U.S. government.

The expanded program consolidates two prior initiatives — Project Glasswing and the original CVP. According to Anthropic, Project Glasswing partners identified at least 129,000 verified software vulnerabilities between April and July 2026, with more than 33,000 rated as critical- or high-severity. Anthropic's own open-source scanning efforts identified an additional 5,500 verified vulnerabilities between April and October 2026.

To evaluate the effectiveness of its tiered safeguards, Anthropic tested Claude Opus 5.5 using CyScenarioBench, an evaluation measuring multi-stage cyber operation planning. Without CVP access, every task was blocked on the first prompt. In the Defense Access tier, 46 of 50 trials were blocked at some point. In the Red Team Access tier, no blocks occurred, and the model completed 34 of 50 tasks — consistent with its 67.6% baseline success rate when no safeguards are applied.

Data retention is required for enrolled organizations to allow misuse monitoring. Anthropic said it plans to release Enterprise Frontier Safeguards later this fall, enabling eligible organizations to store data in their own cloud infrastructure.

CVP is available on the Claude Platform, Google Cloud's Vertex AI, and Microsoft Foundry, and on Amazon Bedrock for customers eligible for Enterprise Frontier Safeguards.

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