Anthropic announced an expanded Cyber Verification Program on October 6, 2026, integrating its existing CVP and Project Glasswing programs into three access tiers. The change is an application-based access program for qualifying security work, not unrestricted access to its models.
Defense Access covers defensive tasks such as incident response, malware reverse engineering and vulnerability analysis. Anthropic says eligible applicants can include security teams, open-source maintainers and individual researchers with a track record of reported vulnerabilities. It aims to respond within a few days, but that is a company target, not a guarantee.
Red Team Access adds authorized penetration testing and red-teaming. It is currently for organizations, not individual researchers. Testing must be against systems participants are authorized to test, and real-time blocks remain for work that could cause physical harm or mass disruption. Anthropic expects reviews to take a few weeks, with qualifying organizations enrolled in Defense Access during review.
Specialized Access has the fewest cyber blocks and is limited to verified organizations authorized to test high-risk safety systems. Anthropic says reviews involve collaboration with the US government. Existing Glasswing members will transition without reapproval for current models.
Data retention is generally required to monitor misuse. Anthropic says Enterprise Frontier Safeguards is planned for later this fall; existing qualifying zero-data-retention users have an exception. Readers should verify their specific contract and platform terms rather than assume zero retention is available to all applicants now.
Anthropic’s benchmark and vulnerability-discovery figures are company-reported results, not independent proof that all vulnerabilities are patched or that the models can safely perform every security task. We did not test the program. The practical change is tiered, verified access with different limits, not a removal of authorization requirements.