Anthropic opens cybersecurity program applications, releases cheaper Haiku

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Anthropic’s move to expand its cyber verification program and release Claude Haiku 5.5 as a cost-efficient, speedy model shows how the vendor is aiming not only to be known as a frontier model provider that prioritizes security but also to be accessible to enterprises seeking lower-cost options.

The Claude creator’s decision comes amid an AI market in which frontier model providers face challenges competing against Chinese open source vendors that offer capable models that include cybersecurity capabilities at a lower cost.

“China is open sourcing … some of the most powerful models in the world that are roughly just as capable at cybersecurity and threat detection and analysis as the OpenAI and Anthropic models are,” said Carter Huffman, CEO and co-founder at Modulate, a voice AI vendor.

The Chinese open-weight models leave the U.S. open-weight market weaker than China’s because there isn’t, currently, a comparable U.S. open model. At the same time, the Chinese vendors are pressuring providers of proprietary AI models, such as Anthropic, to make their models more accessible to enterprises

Cybersecurity verification program

This tension is evident in Anthropic’s decision to expand its cyber verification program on October 6. Anthropic originally introduced the CVP in April alongside Project Glasswing and Claude Mythos.

The expanded CVP provides qualifying security professionals with access to cybersecurity capabilities, reduces the number of blocking classifiers and offers three access tiers. Each tier provides access to powerful Anthropic models, such as Claude Mythos 5.1 (Anthropic’s previously restricted cybersecuritymodel under Project Glasswing), the powerful but pricey Claude Opus 5.5, and the fast and more cost-efficient Claude Sonnet 5.5.

Being safe, and challenges

Anthropic is trying to be more accessible and also practicing safety by releasing its models to select enterprises, Shah said.