Anthropic Expands Cyber Verification Program With Three Access Tiers

Anthropic announced on its website an expanded Cyber Verification Program with three access tiers for verified security professionals. Each tier provides access to Claude Opus 5.5, Claude Sonnet 5.5, Claude Mythos 5.1, and future models, with different safeguards and verification requirements.

Defense Access covers incident response, malware analysis, vulnerability research, and other defensive work. It is open to qualifying company, government, university, nonprofit, and critical infrastructure teams, as well as smaller security firms, open source maintainers, and individual researchers. Red Team Access adds authorized penetration testing for organizations, while retaining blocks on actions that could cause physical harm or widespread disruption.

Specialized Access has the fewest cyber blocks and is limited to verified organizations authorized to test systems such as power grids, telecom networks, flight systems, and interbank transfer infrastructure. Anthropic reviews applicants for this tier with the US government. Existing Project Glasswing participants will move to Specialized Access without requiring approval again for current models.

In Anthropic's CyScenarioBench tests, Defense Access blocked 46 of 50 trials, while Red Team Access produced no blocks and completed 34 trials. The company said Project Glasswing partners found at least 129,000 verified software vulnerabilities from April to July 2026, while its open source scanning found another 5,500 through October.