WatchGuard joins OpenAI & Anthropic AI cyber schemes

WatchGuard has joined OpenAI's Daybreak program and Anthropic's Cyber Verification Program, expanding the cybersecurity company's access to artificial intelligence tools for its security teams.

The company is using the technology for product security testing, penetration testing, red teaming, threat research and vulnerability remediation. It described this as a multi-model strategy rather than reliance on a single AI provider.

The announcement reflects a broader shift in cybersecurity as companies respond to attackers' use of AI. Threat actors are using these systems to automate reconnaissance, identify attack paths and accelerate exploit development.

In response, WatchGuard is applying AI to vulnerability discovery, security testing, threat research and the process of finding and fixing security issues. Access to tools from OpenAI and Anthropic is intended to help its teams assess weaknesses more quickly and test products more thoroughly.

WatchGuard's customer base gives the decision wider relevance in the managed services market. More than 25,000 managed service providers and security partners use its products to help protect more than 1.5 million companies worldwide, according to the company.

Multi-model strategy

Rather than align itself with one AI ecosystem, WatchGuard plans to keep assessing and adopting models from different suppliers as the technology develops. The approach is designed to let its teams compare tools and deploy them where they are most useful for defensive work.

The company cast the strategy as a response to the pace of change in AI and the way cyber risks are evolving alongside it. Using multiple models may also reduce dependence on a single provider at a time when security vendors are deciding how closely to tie their products and research functions to large AI developers.

Marc Laliberte, Head of Security Operations at WatchGuard Technologies, outlined the company's view of the threat landscape.

"AI is fundamentally changing cybersecurity for both defenders and attackers," Laliberte said.

"Cybercriminals are already using these technologies to uncover weaknesses and accelerate attacks. Our responsibility is to ensure defenders benefit from equally powerful capabilities."

MSP focus

WatchGuard has long focused on the managed service provider market, where partners are under pressure to monitor and defend large numbers of customer environments with limited security staff. In that setting, tools that shorten testing cycles or improve vulnerability identification can affect both operational workloads and the speed of incident response.

Its latest AI investments are aimed at helping those partners keep pace with a threat environment increasingly shaped by machine learning systems. Security providers have been working out how to use the same class of tools that attackers now employ for code generation, reconnaissance and social engineering.

Joe Smolarski, Chief Executive Officer of WatchGuard Technologies, said the company does not expect one model to define the next phase of cyber defence.

"The future of cybersecurity won't be built on a single AI model," Smolarski said.

"That's why we're aggressively investing across the frontier AI ecosystem, giving our teams access to advanced capabilities from multiple providers. As these technologies evolve, we'll continue evaluating, adopting and operationalising the innovations that help our partners and customers stay ahead of what's next."

OpenAI's Daybreak program and Anthropic's Cyber Verification Program are both intended to give security organisations access to AI systems for cyber-related use cases. For WatchGuard, the tie-ups add to a growing industry pattern in which security vendors are building direct relationships with model developers instead of relying only on public tools or general-purpose interfaces.

The move also highlights how AI is becoming part of internal security operations rather than only a feature in customer-facing products. In WatchGuard's case, the emphasis is on internal testing, research and remediation work that could shape how vulnerabilities are found and addressed before products reach users.

For managed service providers, the practical test will be whether these tools help vendors detect weaknesses sooner and respond faster as AI-driven attacks become more common across the cyber threat landscape.