OpenAI says its Daybreak for Frontline Defenders initiative will expand frontier cyber-AI deployment among resource-constrained essential-service defenders through $1 billion in subsidized access targeted for consumption within six months, supported by training and an MS-ISAC pilot.

Open article · Retrieved 2026-10-03T00:21:22.278687+00:00

September 3, 2026

[Security](https://openai.com/news/security/)

# Daybreak for Frontline Defenders: $1B to protect essential services

OpenAI is committing $1 billion in subsidized Daybreak access, training, technical support, and partnerships to help frontline defenders protect essential services.

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***Today OpenAI is introducing Daybreak for Frontline Defenders, a new global initiative to help frontline defenders use frontier AI cyber capabilities to protect essential services in the United States and around the world. The initiative includes:***

- ***A $1 billion global commitment*** *to expand subsidized access to Daybreak cyber models and products, training, technical support, and partnerships in the United States and internationally.*
- ***Daybreak for America, bringing together all of OpenAI’s U.S. work to protect the systems Americans rely on every day****—from water and electricity to local government and banking—including a new pilot with the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC).*
- *More than 35 enterprise products and partner-operated services through the* ***Daybreak Defense Network,*** *bringing Daybreak cyber models into the tools, services, and workflows enterprise defenders already use.*

Every day, we depend on cyber defenders to protect the systems that keep communities running: the water coming from the tap, the electricity powering homes and businesses, the local government systems that deliver public services, and the financial institutions people trust with their money. Many operate with limited staff and budgets, while defending complex and aging systems.

In the coming months, AI-enabled cyber attacks will become far more widespread and sophisticated as models around the world become increasingly capable. That shift puts every organization on notice. Defenders need to act now: test systems, find weaknesses, and strengthen defenses before attackers do.

Frontier AI can help defenders move faster. We have a [**defender’s window**](https://openai.com/index/the-defenders-window/): a narrowing opportunity to use AI to close security gaps before attackers seize them. Our role is to help put powerful tools in defenders’ hands so they can protect the systems, and the people, they are responsible for.

Last week, we[**called for collective action**](https://openai.com/collective-cyberdefense/) to seize that window, alongside more than 150 organizations across cybersecurity, technology, critical infrastructure, finance, and AI. No single company can secure the systems we all depend on. Every organization has a role to play, and defenders need the tools to move faster.

Today, OpenAI is making a major commitment to help. **Daybreak for Frontline Defenders brings together $1 billion in subsidized access to frontier cyber capabilities, hands-on training and technical assistance, and new partnerships to get those capabilities to organizations that protect the services people depend on every day.** We are starting where the gap is greatest: with defenders carrying enormous responsibility without the resources of the world’s largest companies. Our goal is to build a model that can protect the services Americans rely on and, with our partners, help put frontier cybersecurity in the hands of frontline defenders around the world.

## $1 billion for frontline defenders

**OpenAI is committing $1 billion in subsidized Daybreak access to help resource-constrained cyber defenders, starting with the United States, put frontier AI to work, targeting it to be consumed over the next six months.** As part of our “Daybreak for America” commitment, we will prioritize operators of essential services—including water and wastewater systems and electric grid operators, alongside state and local governments, community and regional banks, nonprofits, open-source maintainers, and other organizations with limited security resources. Many of these teams defend complex and often aging systems against faster-moving threats without the budgets, tools, or specialized expertise available to large enterprises. Daybreak access can help them review legacy code, analyze suspicious activity, identify and validate vulnerabilities, prioritize the most serious risks, and develop and test fixes. In the coming weeks, we intend to expand this model to partner countries.

This commitment builds on support already provided to infrastructure defenders facing urgent threats. **Following recent attacks on U.S. water systems, we offered affected states and utilities up to $1 million in no-cost API credits, Daybreak access, and technical assistance.** Teams were able to use that support to review code and system configurations, validate findings, develop patches, and confirm fixes while water systems remained operational and communities continued receiving the services they depended on.

## Expanded access to frontier AI and hands-on support for defenders

Earlier this year, we launched [**Daybreak**](https://openai.com/daybreak/), which enables verified public and private sector defenders to use advanced AI for authorized cyber defense. Daybreak Blue supports common defensive work with our mainline models; Daybreak Red gives approved organizations access to specialized cyber models for more sensitive and technically demanding work. **Thousands of defenders across 2,000 approved organizations and workspaces already use Daybreak, including cybersecurity companies, defense organizations, and law enforcement organizations.**

**Alongside broader access, we are increasing hands-on support for frontline defenders in essential sectors.** We have convened an ongoing series of meetings with frontline defenders, including utilities, state and local governments, community banks, and others, to learn from their work and help them use our tools to harden their systems, and we will continue those convenings as Daybreak for Frontline Defenders expands. This week’s second gathering of utility companies brought together participants representing 40 states and the District of Columbia that collectively provide essential services to more than half of the U.S. population.

## New partnerships with defenders

Access to capable models is only useful if frontline defenders have the training and support to use them effectively. **Today, we are announcing a public sector and water-focused pilot with the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center, or MS-ISAC, to train and support state, local, tribal, and territorial cyber defenders.** The pilot will pair Daybreak access with guided training and hands-on assistance for an initial group of public sector and water system defenders, helping them validate and prioritize findings, coordinate remediation, and develop a repeatable approach that can be expanded over time.

MS-ISAC provides cyber-threat intelligence, incident-response support, real-time information sharing, and other shared defenses to thousands of public-sector organizations, including utilities, public hospitals, K–12 schools, and law-enforcement agencies. Its members protect many of the systems closest to Americans’ daily lives—from drinking water and public hospitals to schools, emergency services, and local governments. The pilot is intended to develop a model that could eventually benefit organizations across that broader community.

Support also needs to reach defenders through the tools and services they already use. **Today, our partners across the** [**Daybreak Defense Network**](https://openai.com/daybreak/partners/) **are announcing more than 35 partner products and partner-operated services that bring OpenAI’s Daybreak cyber models into the hands of the enterprise.** Our goal is collective action becoming operational, with products, services, and workflows defenders can use.

Ultimately, the goal is not just to find more vulnerabilities, but to fix them faster. **This week, we published OpenAI’s approach to building a** [**Defense Factory**⁠](https://openai.com/the-defense-factory)**: a continuous, agent-first operation that builds on existing security and engineering tools to find and validate vulnerabilities and prepare tested fixes for review.** We are sharing its architecture and lessons so other defenders can adapt the approach to their own environments.

## Work with us

The defender’s window will not stay open indefinitely. The opportunity now is to make sure the advantages frontier AI can give defenders reach beyond the largest companies and best-resourced security teams—and into the communities and institutions whose security affects millions of people.

That means more than providing access to capable models. It means helping frontline defenders—water utilities, community banks, health systems, local governments—find vulnerabilities, turn them into tested fixes, and protect those they serve. Daybreak for Frontline Defenders is our commitment to putting that capability in the hands of the frontline defenders who need it most. Our goal is to use frontier AI to make the systems Americans depend on harder to attack and easier to repair.

Eligible state and local governments, critical infrastructure operators, nonprofits, [open-source](https://openai.com/index/patch-the-planet/) maintainers, and supporting organizations can visit the [Daybreak website](https://openai.com/daybreak/) to learn more about access, technical assistance, training, and other cyber-defense support.

- [2026](https://openai.com/news/?tags=2026)
- [Cybersecurity](https://openai.com/news/?tags=cybersecurity)

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Open article · Retrieved 2026-09-23T12:21:10.163435+00:00

September 23, 2026

[Global Affairs](https://openai.com/news/global-affairs/)

# OpenAI extends cyber access to Ukraine for civilian defense

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OpenAI today announced it will offer the Government of Ukraine access to its Daybreak program to support the cyber defense of civilian infrastructure. Working with the Ministry of Digital Transformation, OpenAI will provide Ukrainian teams with access to tools to identify software vulnerabilities and develop and test fixes more quickly.

The announcement was made on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly by Dmytro Kushneruk, the Consul General of Ukraine in San Francisco, and Sasha Baker, Head of National Security Policy at OpenAI.

Ukrainian defenders face persistent cyber attacks from Russia, alongside physical attacks on the country’s infrastructure. Ukraine’s national cyber incident response team, CERT-UA, [handled⁠(opens in a new window)](https://info.poda.gov.ua/news/251006) nearly 6,000 cyber incidents in 2025. These include attacks on hospital systems, the energy sector and telecommunications, underscoring the pressure on the organizations providing essential services to Ukrainians.

OpenAI’s Daybreak gives cyber defenders access to advanced AI for authorized security work, from reviewing older software and investigating suspicious activity to validating vulnerabilities and testing fixes.

We are proud to support Ukraine’s cyber defenders, who are protecting essential services against attacks every day. Through Daybreak, public and private entities have an opportunity to strengthen their cyber defenses before emerging threats take hold. Ukraine is already on the front line, and its defenders need support now. We want to put more capable tools in their hands to help them find and fix vulnerabilities and protect the critical networks people depend on.

—Sasha Baker, Head of National Security Policy at OpenAI

Ukraine has shown under the most extreme pressure that cyber defense is a central part of national security. Protecting civilian infrastructure means defending it against both physical and digital attacks, so people can continue to live, work and access essential services. We’re now putting our technology and resources behind that effort, helping the Ukrainian government strengthen its cyber defenses with AI.

—George Osborne, Head of OpenAI for Countries

OpenAI has already provided access to its cyber models to defenders in Europe including France, Germany, Poland, and others. The EU’s cyber agency, ENISA, has used the models to identify vulnerabilities in software used across EU institutions, all of which have since been fixed.

In Poland, the national cyber agency, CERT Polska, used OpenAI models to help discover six vulnerabilities in third-party router software. The vendor has released fixes, which CERT Polska confirms prevent the attacks it observed.

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Open article · Retrieved 2026-10-09T09:30:39.736999+00:00

October 9, 2026

# Sophos cuts threat investigation time by 96% with OpenAI Daybreak

With OpenAI Daybreak, Sophos combines frontier intelligence with cybersecurity expertise to investigate threats faster and protect customers at scale.

[Contact sales](https://openai.com/contact-sales/)

Company size: Partner

Region: Global

Industry: Technology

Products: Daybreak

89 seconds

average response time for cases using AI agents

96%

reduction in investigation time using OpenAI models

52%

of MDR cases resolved end-to-end by AI

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## Staying ahead as the defender’s window narrows

Frontier AI is [changing cybersecurity on both sides⁠(opens in a new window)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jDhHA9JGUE&list=PLEMCKj4AZ_iI&index=3). Advanced models can help defenders find and investigate threats faster. But those capabilities are also spreading to open-weight models, giving attackers new ways to discover vulnerabilities and accelerate exploitation.

[Sophos⁠(opens in a new window)](https://www.sophos.com/) is one of the companies standing in their way, protecting more than 625,000 organisations across sectors and regions. “We see a huge variety of different attacks,” says John Peterson, the company’s Chief Technology Officer. “We’ve cultivated vast expertise in combating them over four decades in the cybersecurity business.”

Through [OpenAI Daybreak](https://openai.com/daybreak/), Sophos is combining OpenAI models with its own threat intelligence, response playbooks and security expertise. The aim isn’t simply to give analysts another tool. It’s to increase the impact of Sophos’s expertise across every customer it protects.

> *“Sophos brings the domain expertise and the know-how to combat attacks at scale. Programmes like Daybreak, and companies like OpenAI, bring frontier intelligence that allows us to take that domain expertise and scale it to support all of our customers.”*

—John Peterson, CTO, Sophos

## Inside the rollout

At the centre of the work is Sophos Fusion, the Sophos AI-native cyber defense system that includes Sophos Managed Detection and Response (MDR). It brings together sensor data from more than 500 third-party integrations alongside Sophos’s own products. Together, those sensors generate trillions of events every day, which Sophos distills into roughly 1,000 to 2,000 cases for its nine security operations centres to investigate.

Agents built through Daybreak have changed how those cases are handled. An investigation agent gathers the customer context, detections, indicators of compromise (IoCs) and relevant threat intelligence for each case. A planning model then creates a plan–execute–review loop: building an investigation plan, completing the steps and producing a summary with recommended response actions for analysts to review. Other agents can carry out parts of the response.

Before Daybreak, investigating and responding to a case depended primarily on human expertise. Sophos’s existing process averaged around 38 minutes — performance Peterson says was better than 96% of professional security operations centres.

> *“Now, because of the agents we’ve been able to build through the Daybreak programme, the average response time for cases using those agents has fallen to about 89 seconds. About half of the cases we handle are now being automated by agents we developed using the Daybreak models.”*

—John Peterson, CTO, Sophos

## Keeping judgement at the centre

Sophos has built customer control into its MDR service through three operating modes:

- **Notify**: Sophos investigates the case and recommends a response, but the customer acts.
- **Collaborate**: Sophos and the customer work together before action is taken.
- **Authorise**: Sophos can respond directly on the customer’s behalf.

The same boundaries apply whether work is completed by a person or an agent. Sophos uses automation to move quickly and make better use of analysts’ time, but potentially destructive actions still require the right level of human oversight.

“Anything we don’t feel comfortable with an agent handling gets passed off for human judgement,” Peterson confirms.

## Results at a glance

- Reduced the average response time for cases using agents from approximately 38 minutes to 89 seconds.
- Enabled Sophos to resolve 52% of MDR cases end-to-end with AI, within boundaries calibrated by Sophos analysts.
- Gives customers a faster and more consistent investigation experience.
- Helps Sophos scale compute rather than relying on equivalent growth in scarce cybersecurity headcount.
- Returns analysts’ attention to the threats, exceptions and decisions where their expertise matters most.

## What’s next

Peterson says Sophos will keep expanding what its agents can do. “The response capabilities are going to continue to become more sophisticated, and we’re going to broaden the range of use cases we address with the agents we’ve built.”

> *“With programmes like Daybreak, we have an opportunity to stay a step ahead of the attacker community.”*

—John Peterson, CTO, Sophos

His advice for other security leaders is simple: “The one thing security leaders should do tomorrow is really come back to focusing on the security fundamentals for their organization,” he says. “That of course includes patching. But patches are only ever going to include vulnerabilities that are known by the vendor.”

The answer is to maintain “a layered security approach” that includes endpoint protection, multifactor authentication (MFA), network segmentation and strong security operations. “Vulnerabilities are being discovered at an alarming rate and exploited at a scale that we’ve never seen. So I think doing the fundamentals well is more important today than it’s ever been.”

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