Anthropic Cyber Verification Program: tiered access for defenders
Anthropic now gates Claude's offensive-security help behind three verified access tiers.
· Anthropic · Research by Anthropic
Anthropic is expanding its Cyber Verification Program into Defense, Red Team and Specialized tiers that relax Claude's cyber safeguards for verified security teams. Anthropic says its public models block most cyber work.
01What happened
Anthropic announced on October 6, 2026 that it is expanding its Cyber Verification Program into three tiers of verified access. Defense covers security teams, critical-infrastructure operators, open-source maintainers and individual researchers with a record of reporting vulnerabilities. Red Team covers organizations doing authorized adversarial testing, and Specialized covers safety-critical work reviewed with the US government.
02How it works
Anthropic says its generally available models block most cyber work. At the Defense tier, 46 of 50 of its test tasks are still blocked. At the Red Team tier, Anthropic says there are no blocks on its multi-stage cyber operations eval, and individuals are not eligible for that tier.
03Who is affected
Security teams that use Claude for vulnerability research or red teaming and currently hit refusals.
04What to do
Security teams that hit cyber refusals in Claude can review the eligibility rules for each tier and apply through Anthropic's program page.
Sources 2 links, all fetched
- 1anthropic.comAnthropic Announcement
- 2support.claude.comCVP Help Article