Santa Clara, Calif. – September 22, 2026 -- Palo Alto Networks has launched Unit 42 Continuous Frontier AI Defense, a new agentic offensive security service built on Anthropic's Claude Mythos 5 and OpenAI's GPT-5.6-Cyber models, aimed at helping enterprises find and fix exposures before attackers exploit them at machine speed.
The service responds to a shift in attacker capability: threat actors using AI have compressed breach cycles by nearly 97% in some cases, cutting the time from vulnerability discovery to exploitation from weeks to hours, according to Palo Alto Networks.
Unit 42 expands prior Frontier AI Defense with always-on testing
Continuous Frontier AI Defense builds on Unit 42's Frontier AI Defense, which launched in April with point-in-time exposure analysis. In August, Unit 42 expanded that offering with GPT-5.6-Cyber and Claude Mythos 5. The new service adds a continuous testing engine that runs a full-estate baseline scan followed by always-on monitoring as an organization's environment changes.
Multi-model harness routes tasks across gated and open-weight AI models
The service is powered by a proprietary multi-model harness that routes tasks to the AI model best suited for each job, combining Claude Mythos 5, GPT-5.6-Cyber and open-weight models with Unit 42 threat intelligence and offensive security expertise. It validates end-to-end attack paths across first- and third-party web apps, APIs, cloud infrastructure, source code repositories and network assets, and delivers prioritized remediation guidance, including virtual patch recommendations that can be paired with Frontier Virtual Patching.
Internal testing found a year's worth of exposures in three weeks
Palo Alto Networks developed and validated the approach over six months of in-house testing and more than 100 Unit 42 customer engagements, backed by a $17 million investment in R&D and methodology optimization. During internal deployment, the company found a year's worth of exposures in three weeks. Across customer assessments using the Frontier AI Exposure Analysis, 100% of customers had exposures identified, with 37% rated high or critical in severity. Most exposures originated in first-party applications, and more than two in three exposures found in third-party apps had no known CVE.
OpenAI and Anthropic executives back the joint offensive security push
Sam Rubin, Senior Vice President of Unit 42 at Palo Alto Networks, said AI has created an asymmetric advantage for attackers and that modern cybersecurity now requires machine-speed defense. McCall McIntyre, Head of Global Cyber Partnerships at OpenAI, said the partnership pairs GPT Cyber Models with security expertise and governance to move organizations from discovery to remediation faster. Michael Moore, Cybersecurity Lead at Anthropic, said Claude Mythos has identified more than ten thousand high-severity vulnerabilities across widely used software, and that Unit 42 tests exploitability and routes fixes to the right teams.
Subscription pricing varies by model selection, available worldwide
Continuous Frontier AI Defense is available globally on an annual subscription basis, with pricing options depending on which OpenAI, Anthropic and open-source models customers select. All subscription tiers use the multi-model harness to match AI models to specific security tasks.