Lily Hay Newman Security Apr 14, 2026 4:00 PM In the Wake of Anthropic’s Mythos, OpenAI Has a New Cybersecurity Model—and Strategy OpenAI says its safeguards “sufficiently reduce cyber risk” for now, while GPT-5.4-Cyber is a new cybersecurity-focused model. Photograph: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images Save this story Save this story OpenAI on Tuesday announced the next phase of its cybersecurity strategy and a new model specifically designed for use by digital defenders, GPT-5.4-Cyber. The news comes in the wake of an announcement last week by competitor Anthropic that its new Claude Mythos Preview model is only being privately released for now—because, the company says, it could be exploited by hackers and bad actors . Anthropic also announced an industry coalition, including competitors like Google, focused on how advances in generative AI across the field will impact cybersecurity. OpenAI seemed to be seeking to differentiate its message on Tuesday by striking a less catastrophic tone and touting its existing guardrails and defenses while hinting at the need for more advanced protections in the long term. “We believe the class of safeguards in use today sufficiently reduce cyber risk enough to support broad deployment of current models,” the company wrote in a blog post. “We expect versions of these safeguards to be sufficient for upcoming more powerful models, while models explicitly trained and made more permissive for cybersecurity work require more restrictive deployments and appropriate controls. Over the long term, to ensure the ongoing sufficiency of AI safety in cybersecurity, we also expect the need for more expansive defenses for future models, whose capabilities will rapidly exceed even the best purpose-built models of today.” The company says that it has homed in on three pillars for its cybersecurity approach. The first involves so-called “know your customer” validation systems to allow controlled access to new models that is as broad and “democratized” as possible. “We design mechanisms which avoid arbitrarily deciding who gets access for legitimate use and who doesn’t,” the company wrote on Tuesday. OpenAI is combining a model where it partners with certain organizations on limited releases with an automated system introduced in February, known as Trusted Access for Cyber or TAC. The second component of the strategy involves “iterative deployment,” or a process of “carefully” releasing and then refining new capabilities so the company can get real-world insight and feedback. The blog post particularly highlights “resilience to jailbreaks and other adversarial attacks, and improving defensive capabilities.” Finally, the third focus is on investments that the company says support software security and other digital defense as generative AI proliferates. OpenAI says that the initiative fits into its broader security efforts, including an application security AI agent launched last month known as Codex Security, a cybersecurity grants program that began in 2023, a recent donation to the Linux Foundation to support open source security, and the “Preparedness Framework” that is meant to assess and defend against “severe harm from frontier AI capabilities.” Anthropic's claims last week that more capable AI models necessitate a cybersecurity reckoning have been controversial among security experts. Some say the concern is overstated and could feed a new wave of anti-hacker sentiment—consolidating power even more with tech giants. Others, though, emphasize that vulnerabilities and shortcomings in current security defenses are well known and really could be exploited with new speed and intensity by an even broader range of bad actors in the age of agentic AI. Comments Back to top You Might Also Like In your inbox: Will Knight's AI Lab explores advances in AI Unmasking the paramilitary agents behind Trump’s immigration crackdown Big Story: Opposing ICE might save the country—or ruin your life Porn stars are embracing AI clones WIRED@Night: Hear Andy Greenberg discuss the facts and fiction of crypto Lily Hay Newman is a senior writer at WIRED focused on information security, digital privacy, and hacking. She previously worked as a technology reporter at Slate, and was the staff writer for Future Tense, a publication and partnership between Slate, the New America Foundation, and Arizona State University. Her work ... Read More Senior Writer Topics OpenAI Anthropic cybersecurity security hacking privacy vulnerabilities Read More Anthropic Teams Up With Its Rivals to Keep AI From Hacking Everything The AI lab's Project Glasswing will bring together Apple, Google, and more than 45 other organizations. They'll use the new Claude Mythos Preview model to test advancing AI cybersecurity capabilities. Lily Hay Newman Anthropic’s Mythos Will Force a Cybersecurity Reckoning—Just Not the One You Think The new AI model is being heralded—and feared—as a hacker’s superweapon. Experts say its arrival is a wake-up call for developers who have long made security an afterthought. Lily Hay Newman Meta Pauses Work With Mercor After Data Breach Puts AI Industry Secrets at Risk Major AI labs are investigating a security incident that impacted Mercor, a leading data vendor. The incident could have exposed key data about how they train AI models. Maxwell Zeff Signal’s Creator Is Helping Encrypt Meta AI Moxie Marlinspike says the technology powering his encrypted AI chatbot, Confer, will be integrated into Meta AI. The move could help protect the AI conversations of millions of people. Matt Burgess Iran-Linked Hackers Are Sabotaging US Energy and Water Infrastructure As Trump threatens Iranian infrastructure, the US government warns that Iran has carried out its own digital attacks against US critical infrastructure. Andy Greenberg Meta’s New AI Model Gives Mark Zuckerberg a Seat at the Big Kid’s Table Muse Spark is Meta’s first model since its AI reboot, and the benchmarks suggest formidable performance. Will Knight Iranian Hackers Breached Kash Patel’s Email—but Not the FBI’s Plus: Apple makes big claims about the effectiveness of its Lockdown Mode anti-spyware feature, Russia moves to implement homegrown encryption for 5G, and more. Andrew Couts The US Army Is Building Its Own Chatbot for Combat The AI system, trained on real military data, is meant to give soldiers mission-critical information. Will Knight The Hack That Exposed Syria’s Sweeping Security Failures When Syrian government accounts were hijacked in March, the breach looked chaotic. But it revealed something more troubling: a state struggling with the most basic layer of cybersecurity. Danny Makki OpenAI Backs Bill That Would Limit Liability for AI-Enabled Mass Deaths or Financial Disasters The ChatGPT-maker testified in favor of an Illinois bill that would limit when AI labs can be held liable—even in cases where their products cause “critical harm.” Maxwell Zeff The Danger Behind Meta Killing End-to-End Encryption for Instagram DMs Meta blamed users for not opting into the privacy-protecting feature. Experts fear the move could be the first major domino to fall for end-to-end encryption tech worldwide. Lily Hay Newman Anthropic Opposes the Extreme AI Liability Bill That OpenAI Backed Anthropic and OpenAI are clashing over a proposed Illinois law that would let AI labs largely off the hook for mass deaths and financial disasters. Maxwell Zeff